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LANETT — A Lanett resident has asked city officials to have better enforcement of an existing truck route ordinance.

At the Monday evening council meeting, Charles Samples said that he’d lived on North 18th Street for 20 years and that his mother had lived there for 40 years prior to that. He said that big trucks had been coming by his house at all hours of the day and that he’d taken photographs of them to prove it. Samples said he had talked to Chambers County Highway Engineer Josh Harvill about this and had been told that city streets had not been designed and built to hold up frequent travel by big trucks.

“Last December, the city had to replace a water main in front of my house,” Samples said implying that big trucks being on the street may have caused that damage. “The trucks are coming by my house at all hours of the day and night. I have counted as many as 12 of them in one day going past my house from West Point or from Fredonia Road.”

According to the ordinance, big trucks are limited to designated truck routes. There are exceptions when a truck has a delivery to make inside the city.

A truck route is defined as a highway, a portion of a highway or a series of connected highways on which heavy trucks can travel at any and at all times.

Truck rotes in the local area would include I-85, Highway 29, Kia Parkway, Kia Boulevard, Georgia Highway 18, etc. Truck routes in Lanett include Highway 29, Highway 50 and Phillips Road.

Samples blames the present truck traffic on Google GPS maps.

“Truck drivers are googling the shortest route to get to where they need to go,” he said. “If they are in West Point and need to get to Fredonia Road, Google will lead them to West 10th Street in West Point (which becomes North 18th at the state line) and then to Fredonia Road. All these trucks are using Google maps. Is there some way Google can fix this?”

Samples suggested the best remedy might be for the police department to start issuing tickets to trucks that are taking short cuts off designated routes.

“If it was $100 a ticket, you could pay a lot of salaries with the money you’d be making,” he said.

Mayor Jamie Heard offered to meet with Samples to talk out what can be done.