overweights

trucker atlas will tell you all.

 

Perfect! I use the large print laminated Rand-McNally truckers atlas.

 

Yea a cat scale will tell you you're exact weight. Rule of thumb. 12/34/34. Roll onto a cat scale weigh slide and repeat. Every pin hole on a van is between 250-500lbs or something in that range. 4" spacing is lower than 6" spacing. I believe those are the 2 spacings. Anyway those are the numbers you can work with for estimates. So if you roll onto the scale and you're at 12000 on yours steer 33k on the drives and 35k on the trailer slide the trailer axles BACK 2 holes to put the weight on the drives lock the pins reweigh and go. Also keep in mind diesel fuel weights 8lbs/gallon. You will thank me for that one day. You don't realize it now but you will.

 

The first thing you should try to do when you get a different truck is hook to an empty trailer, fill your tanks and go to a CatScale and get your empty weight. That'll give you a good idea what you can carry. Shippers will put their product weight on the bills in most cases. Most are accurate as they weigh each pallet or know the product. Only a few wildly guess or be sneaky. Depending on your truck and trailer you should be able to haul around 46,000 lbs. My last truck was a Pete 387 pulling a reefer and I could only handle 44,400 because of the truck and reefer unit. Though hardly any of our customers loaded much more than 42,000 lb.

When you load a trailer you have to compensate for the tractor drive weight and the nose of the trailer being heavier. So if you have heavy pallets like 2500 lbs each you don't want to be cramming them all in the nose but stretch them out in a trailer. You don't want to loosely load if you can help it but use single pallet, double pallet to your advantage. Do some head scratching with your pallet count and try to stretch the load to the 44'-48' mark. Always start with a single on them short pallet heavy load deals. Sometimes if you have something real heavy like new forklifts or welding rods you really have to stretch the load out and block and brace.

If everything is done right with like pallets the back of the last pallet will sit on top of the center of the rear axle. Maybe 2 holes further and you'll be pretty close to right when you go scale.

Light loads I would say less than 36,000 lbs you won't even have to scale out. You would have to go crazy loading to get overweight.

Don't be that new driver scaling out with 15,000 lbs. It's a waste of money and the driver standing in line behind you gets a chuckle.

The more you scale the better you'll get. The more experience you get the less you'll scale. I remember when I started I might do 1-2 reweighs a trip. Now I might do 2-3 reweighs a year. It takes time to learn just like learning to shift and drive.

 

There are a lot of drivers out there that would be more then happy to help you.Don't be afraid to ask.They were once new so they know the feeling.

 

379 is right but I will add that, thats just for van/reefer trailers with closed sliding tandems. If you ever pull flatbed, your allowed 20k per axle on a spread but most of the time its not the weight of the load that gets you, its the correct placement of the load on the trailer. However you did not state what you pull but being a newbie I assume a van/reefer. Gotta be careful with those because loaders have a VERY bad habit of shoving prouduct to the nose of the trailer and not spacing it out across the floor like chicken or beer loads that are heavy. Plus with all the pallets of product pressed up againest each other, when they start unloading and picking the rear most pallet up the boxes tend to bind on each other resulting in damage.

As 379 said, 12/34/34 and make sure the total gross weight doesn't exceed 80k.

 

Yes cat scale have pampletts you can pickup at truck stop that gives the locations.

 

Just stay away from the buffet!

and soda.

Mikeeee

 

Beat me to it. I was going to go at it Foxworthy style:

If your blood type is Ragu', you may be overweight.
If you can sit on a toilet and leave a ring on the outside, you may be overweight.
If the back of your neck looks like a pack of hotdogs, you may be overweight
If you have a Front Butt, you may be overweight.
If an Asian person ever called you Yokozuna, you may be overweight.
If you can roll over a dollar and make 4 quarters, you may be overweight.