Overweight policies

Can't answer the question but I've wondered that myself!

One of the fine folks we have here on TTR will be by shortly to answer I'm sure....

 

Part I- basically yes.

Part II- If you leave find the nearest scale, if DOT pulls you over before then, you really don't have a lot you can do and unless your company pays for overweight tickets, you'd be responsible.

Part III- You go to a scale 80 miles out of the way and you're overweight you have two options. 1- go back and have them take some off or 2- check your route to see if you'll cross any weigh stations then make the final decision.


I'm headed to my next store, I'll give tell you about two similar situations I had when I was OTR. Be back soon.

 

Locate the nearest scale before loading. Plan your route accordingly.

 

Sometimes no different here....... Lol. But back on topic, best thing to do is locate the nearest scale before loading. Then plan a route to that scale. We load orange juice out of florida and it's way heavy, and before they built the Pilot in Haines City (a year after they tore down the old truck stop) you had to go all the way out to i-4 to the Love's to scale or risk it by running 27 to Ocala and hoping for the best. There's a ton of places in the west that truckstops are few and far in between, but a lot of the state scales that are closed leave the window open so you can scale there. Always prepare yourself.

 

I agree with Joseph. Know where a scale is before getting loaded.


I got loaded and tarped a load of sheet rock. Got to the scale and was 2k lbs over gross. I could either stay on schedule and deliver the next day 400 miles away and no weigh stations along the wa, or go back and waste 5 hours getting some taken off.

I made the delivery but everyone's situation is different. Plan ahead!

 

A lot of newer trucks have load gauges in the digital portion of the instrument cluster (might have to cycle through trip/odometer/temp to find it). Some have more traditional looking dial gauges. These will either tell you the weight of the drives, or the air pressure in the drive air bags (which you can note the reading next time you're at/near 34,000 but probably 60-65psi).

Using that, the weight on the BOL, & seeing how the product is loaded, you can usually see if you're legal (or close to). My general rule is to have my rear axle under the back edge of the last pallet (or as close to it as possible within bridge/kingpin laws). Better than 9 times out of 10 it'll be legal

 

Alright here's a question - anyone ever been in a situation where the nearest scale has a weigh station in between the shipper and that scale? I've pulled a load out of a shipper along I-81 in PA and the closest scale was at the TA in Greencastle. Am I supposed to run 40-60 miles out of route to go up north where there are some scales near Carlisle then come back down? Curious about that. I believe I chanced it and got lucky with the weigh station being closed, because once I got to the CAT scale at the TA I did have to slide the tandems a bit lol.

 

adding to comments.. know what your truck and trailer weigh empty wiith your amount of fuel .. pay attention to the loaded weight on future loads eventually you'll have an idea on what loaded weight will usually work and where to set the tandems.. for example .. if a load weighs 43000 its usually. good unless it was loaded wrong.. at 45100 or more there's a good chance of being over weight