MERCER – Hauling 128-foot-long windmill blades from Texas to Nova Scotia is a little tricky on corners, said driver Kervin Chank of Dallas, Texas.

Following Route 2 through Farmington heading for Bangor Thursday morning, two trucks hauling three large windmill blades were stopped in Mercer waiting for an accident site to clear. Their convoy was escorted by state police troopers.

Leading the procession in a truck hauling one blade, Chank said his rig is 154-feet bumper-to-bumper.

When it comes to corners, his partner, Susan Foreman, traveling in a pickup behind him, steers the rear of the trailer with a remote control.

“It was quite a sight to see us getting in and out of Irving’s in Farmington,” he said.

The blades are intended to replace damaged ones in Nova Scotia. They were made in the Far East and were supposed to have traveled to Nova Scotia by boat. That didn’t happen, he said, so his crew transported the blades from Beaumont, Texas, to New York, intending to cross into Canada to Montreal and on to Nova Scotia. Unable to obtain the necessary permits, he decided to make the trip via Route 2 through Vermont to Maine.

Allowed to only travel from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., the crew hoped to reach Bangor by Thursday afternoon. They have been on the road three weeks with about a week of downtime in New York while he pursued permits, he said.

While his crew doesn’t install the blades, they’re on the road for six to eight weeks at a time bringing them to windmills in Wisconsin, Iowa and Texas. One 300-mile strip in Texas has about 7,000 towers installed, he said.

The 128-foot blades are becoming outdated and they are being replaced by 138- to 164-foot blades that can turn in winds as low as 3 miles an hour, he said.