The Peppers Ferry bridge linking Montgomery and Pulaski counties has been approved for replacement.

Work is expected to begin between July 2008 and July 2009 on the bridge that has been out of use for three years, said Dail Stancill, construction assistant for the Virginia Department of Transportation.

The project is estimated to cost $10.5 million.

In June 2002, a truck driver towing excavation equipment for a Floyd company was heading west across the bridge when the equipment struck the bridge's upper trusses, bending the steel members across the bridge.

For 10 days, highway officials imposed successively lower weight restrictions and then closed the bridge and rerouted westbound traffic onto one lane of the eastbound bridge.

Stancill said repairs would have cost about $500,000.

But transportation officials held out for an agreement with the driver's insurance company as part of a plan to do a major overhaul on the 66-year-old structure.

Federal money is paying for most of the replacement, with a portion coming from the state.

The project will include replacement of a small railroad bridge that motorists pass over before crossing the Peppers Ferry bridge.

Jeff Gibson, a heavy wrecker operator for Harmon's Service Center in Christiansburg, used to drive tractor-trailers across the bridge. He remembers paying close attention to the maximum height limit, which he recalled was about 13 feet and 6 or 7 inches.

"You had to be real careful," he said. "You had to really slow down. Because the truck would bounce a little."

The bridge closure didn't inconvenience him as much as some drivers, he said. But he said a new bridge will probably make everyone feel safer.

"It used to worry me all the time," he said. "You take a heavy wrecker. Our particular wrecker weighed right at 40,000 [pounds]. And if you pulled a fully loaded tractor-trailer across, it was 80,000. All of a sudden you're 120,000 pounds going across that bridge. It makes it kind of scary, going across that old bridge."