Full tank or not? Shipper...

Easy way to not scale out overweight is to inform the shipper of your empty weight. It's your responsibility to keep your truck legal. You do that with communication. As long as you tell the shipper, it's their responsibility to keep the load legal.

 

No sir , you're mistaken in your opinion...the "professional"...... knows the inner-workings of his vehicle..intimately...that means , he knows just how much the unit weighs , both fully fueled and empty. THAT is his responsibility...one of the very 1st questions a driver should ask of a dispatcher/load manager/broker is how much "total weight" this load is...pallets/shipping crates etc included. If the load is heavier than full tanks will allow this should be discussed before the 1st pallet/crate/box/container is loaded , if the folks you work for/haul for are OK with the fact that you may have to stop more frequently for fuel in order to remain legal then OK , fine. Then they know that it's just possible that the time frame of the delivery may have to be altered a bit. Just saying , OK, "you're the boss , I'll haul that load" is the attitude that "won't fly past the end of your nose" . Being a professional doesn't mean you roll over and play dead.

 

Do you guys ever tell the.shipper/broker that your truck is a little heavier than it actually is to give some leeway?

 

It is rare [for most common drivers] to go anywhere where you will be asked or assessed your MT weight then they will load to max you out. As was mentioned, in winter I am going to top off when I fuel, no ifs, ands or buts. If I'm going into a place I know they tend to load heavy, I will go in full if it's practical to do so. If they ask what my fuel level is I say "half". If they say "you have a heavy truck", I'll say "yep, I carry a lot of cat litter for traction and bottled water".

If I'm 500-800 over gross, I'll probably go on, especially if I'm comfortable with the expected scale situation enroute. I recently left Amarillo grossing 80,400 with half a tank fuel bound for Syracuse and had no issues after topping off in Joplin, and it was Christmas weekend. Sometimes you gotta take a chance, sometimes you gotta know when not to take that chance and perhaps lose half a day in the process, reloading.

If everybody follows the shipper rule "arrive half full", then shippers will maximize this advantage and if you're half full and right at gross and you say you won't be able to fuel and as such don't want the load they can say "you're legal, it's not our problem, bye". Don't make it easy[er] for anybody to screw drivers and carriers. You're paid by the mile, not by the ton.

I guess I'm a "wild maverick" because back in my flatbed days, I'd routinely take a $300 payoff to leave Larned, KS for Stephenville, TX with a load of alfalfa at 84,000 lbs rather then go all the way back out to the barn, 20 miles away. Easy money, no worries, no regrets, no second guessing. And that was with a well known flatbed outfit as a company driver. I always get a laugh out of all the do-gooders who flame such comments. At my age, and having done this as long as I have with no accidents or incidents or recent tickets the last 8 years or so, I really don't care what the new guys think but they are good for laughs.

 

That's not what I said, or implied. "Professional" doesn't mean arriving at every shipper with 700 pounds of fuel that could be used for cargo or axle weight adjustment, it limits flexibility.

And it doesn't seem to me to be very professional to top off the tanks, load, fiddle with adjusting the load for let's assume 2 hours including scaling and axle sliding, then drive 50 or 200 miles and right past fuel that's 10 cents/gallon cheaper.

x 500 trucks, that type of non-thinking adds up fast. Let's assume 150 gallons, x .10, x 500 = $7500. Let's assume all 500 fuel every other day for a month and always commit the same mistake. $7500 x 14 = $105,000/month. x12 = $1,260,000/year. The professional always factors the big picture.

 

The professional doesn't make unfounded assumptions, especially about something as fundamentally essential as fuel prices.

 

Some shippers will not cut load ie campbells in paris tx. Had to go in with half tanks then do the 50 gallon shuffle across the country. Got lots of shower credits though. Generally i know before arrival what amount of fuel to have onboard though.

 

No. Never weigh your truck. That is what the Weight Stations are for. They will tell your weight and how much you owe. Pay the man. It all goes to pay down our 17 Trillion dollar debt. You know that truck drivers are in the top 1%. We need to pay as much in taxes and fines as we can.

 

The OTR company I used to work for had an IAMS dog food account that required us to be at half a tank or less when we arrived to load because those loads were always right at or slightly above 46,000. Picked up frequently in Henderson, NC bound for NYC 50 gallons at a time. It kind of sucked but unless your name is on the door, you have to do what you have to do.

 

It's a theoretical but realistic illustrative example. In practice, a professional would check fuel prices along their route. Fuel management is just a facet of truck management. A professional manages their truck as if every dime they can save goes into their own pocket. It's managing cost per mile. You'll have to take my word for it, people notice.