Full tank or not? Shipper...

So you've been there?

Yeah, my response was, "Don't know why I'm having to be reworked multiple times here, I've never had to be reworked before."

They finally 'fessed up to me that they had a new lumper training and they were loading the nose heavy (double, double, double, single) but trying to take weight off the bridge. That story passed the sniff test because they kept sending me into the same door.

My last reload, the dock supervisor came out and told me that the nose was loaded double, single, double and that I'd be legal with roughly 1k to play with. I scaled it and finally got to hit the road.

 

Yep, doubling pallets on the front end of a heavy trailer is a bad idea. That's what happened when I had to rework a load. Wasn't a new guy, just a guy anxious to get home in time to catch the start of the big game. He missed the first half and I don't think he'll likely make that mistake again.

 

That might be true if all truck/trailer combinations were identical, but they aren't, and it's kinda hard to tell just from looking at the inside of the trailer. In one of my rigs, properly loaded, I could cram 45K in there with 1K to spare. Where the standard loading of 2500# pallets is (in my experience) 1-2-1-2 all the way back, in that rig better weight distribution was achieved by instead loading 2 in the nose and going back 2-1-2-1. You gotta know how to load your own rig.

 

Hahaha.... never spent much time dealing with brokers have you? Not trying to be mean, but I can prolly count on one hand the number of times the actual load weight matched what the brokers have told me it weighed, at least when pulling a box.

 

You should have told them were to put it as they are just laborers there to move the freight on and off your trailer. It's up to you to look at the weight of each piece of freight and then decide where you want it. Check your air scale at the end and as long as your not within 500 lbs of legal limits no need to even check a cat scale

Half the time when an shipper tells me that i can just sit in my truck because they've done this a 1000 times before and they are going to do whatever the want they overload an axle and i make them reload it from scratch the way i told them to in the first place.

In regard to the op's question i may not always roll in full of fuel, but i ensure that i can fill up full of fuel without any issues. My truck and trailer weight full of fuel is 31,500 conservatively speaking. I won't take a load more than 48,500.

 

Sure I have. I'm also capable of doing simple math. If BOL weight was more than 43.5k, shipper had to cut product (I had a fat 780), and I wouldn't roll until they did.

 

The driver that brought that trailer in did not have full tanks. They weighed you empty and bobtail . Uh their trucks lost 800 lbs , we can ship X number more cases. Hence the over weight trailer. You go in on fumes you are messing with the next guy. Always show up at Budweiser FULL ! They will keep adding weight till someone tries running with a 5 gallon bucket as a fuel tank!
They want you pulling out the gate as close to 80k as you can be ! If you are to light , you are going back to the dock. Now you are 79999 and 1/4 tank . Have fun!

 

All the Bud loads I've hauled are drop and hooks with preloaded trailers. Therefore there isn't any manipulation of load weight based on how much fuel you have in your tanks. The variable is what kind of trailer they happen to have loaded out of the company fleet. Is it a brand new ultralite Wabash or an ancient Great Dane? No matter what, common sense would be to go to the customer light on fuel, scale out and adjust tandem and 5th wheel, then calculate how much fuel you can take on for max weight.

If you are running solo, you still have to stop for a 10 hour break every day. I can easily run 8-10 hours on 1/4 tank, so it isn't a big deal running on half tanks to start a trip. Worst case scenario I've had to stop twice in a day for fuel and earned extra shower credits. A fuel stop for me takes about 10-15 minutes including bathroom break, since I don't dawdle.... unless you get behind the dreaded idiot that is taking a shower or otherwise occupied while parked in the fuel island.