its time the dot make the shippers have scales on their properties

I'm a company driver,bub. We're not allowed to mess with the trucks or trailers.

 

I reread your post and I see I confused the thread title with your post... I see you did say some... Different that I first read as all.

Who said to refuse every "suspected" overweight load... Scale it, offer solutions, work with both your company and the shipper to fix it, THEN refuse a "verified" overweight load.

And you mentioned the "anti coercion laws" being passed... You have documented an issue that would make you illegal if caught, offered options to fix it to both the company and the shipper, and then refused to haul it...

Ask them, via email, to send you an email telling you to haul a known illegal load... If they refuse to document their orders then don't haul it. If fired, now you have those anti coercion laws working for you.

And, if you are working for such a company, find a better company to work for dude.

Again, with Respect,
MD

 

Interesting concept... While we swap trailers left and right, it might be interesting to have them on the truck.

And that's something that can be added after market???

I might need to learn more about those.

 

Working on that actually. CSA scoring has made prospective employers "difficult" to take on drivers with little or no experience(ask me how I know).

 

Ok, so mention that to both your company and the shipper... When you return the load.

Honestly, just how many overloads do you run?

And if you know it's overloaded, avoid the scales. Everyone knows where they are and half of them are now closed or closed more than they are open.

 

As I mentioned before, some shippers have a policy that once the load leaves their property, they're no longer responsible for it. I've only ran one overweight load(and it was the last one, thank goodness I was able to burn off enough fuel to be legal again). Avoiding the scales is the WORST thing you could do- especially in the Southeast, where they look for drivers doing just that (I-81 and I-77 corridors come to mind).

 

@Chinatown ... Care to help this driver?

How much driving experience do you have?

I was lucky (Thanks to Chinatown) and found a good company that hires and trains new drivers with a CDL and no experience.

I am sure that's not the only one out there.

But this is the place to look for a good company.

 

1 year,4 months and counting OTR(everything east of the Mississippi- dry van).

 

Show them your policy that you do not drive overweight and will return any overweight loads... LOL

 

Lots of open doors for you. No worries.