Heavy on Steers. Got some Q's

lynch was in the nw. and is in cali with the load, he would have been fine till he got to cali, but even if he fueld up all he should have done was just slid the tandoms up a bit to life some of the weight off the steers,
the company him and i work for dont usually pull 80,000lbs loads, tho we do come very close, very very close.
lynch, if im not mistaking, with our volvos, if you have done everything you can to lift some of that weigts off the steers, and ur not over 80 gross, the company will pay you ticket for being over on the steers, thats what a driver told me last night, who has been here for over 20 years. still dont change the fact you may be put oos till its fixed, but at least ur not stuck with the ticket.
remeber what i told you, weight every load for the first few weeks, weather is 2,000lbs, for 44,000lbs so you can learn what you psi tell you in the truck, that way you can eyeball your weights while your being loaded, and while you fuel....

 

They don't seem to care so much about weight in some of the scales out here as much as they care about inspections. I must have gone through the coops in Cordelia 50 times 4 or 5 thousand over when we were laying AC on the 80 in Fairfield and they never pulled me in for weight but they probably did a level 1 on every last one of us.

 

My guess here is the level one was because aggregate companies are notorious for running anything that will move. They won't fix it as long as it will keep running, until they are forced to. As far as the overweight was concerned, your company probably had overweight permits.

I worked for an aggregate hauler for a short, (V E R Y short) time, and it was not at all unusual for me to be over 120,000 with a dump truck and pup. Tag axles and overweight permit was all that was needed.

 

We were running some other companies equipment and it was their contract so they may have had some sort of permit. I definitely did not have anything to show for it if that was the case. All we had was 5 axles to the ground. No tags or anthing like that. I've been over like that with a tanker but its a lot harder for them to get a good weight on a smooth bore tanker with the product moving from one end to the other.

 

slide that 5th wheel son, hopefully its air slide

 

A bit hard to do if you have a fixed fifth wheel, which is what he posted.

 

I have found that when you have weights like he does that sliding the tandems to the rear will in fact lighten your steers.
He had allot of extra weight on the trailer. This means that its center of mass is back far enough that the trailer is actually tilted up in the front some over the drives.
When a trailer is loaded this way and tilting the balance of the trailer to the rear it will raise the weight on the steer tires.
Sliding back the tandems to where weight is balanced would have helped.
Try it some time.

 

It depends on where the fifth wheel is mounted to the frame as to how much it will affect the steers axle. Any weight that has an affect of the drives is going to percentage wise have an affect on the steers, certainly not as much but it does change. If the fifth wheel is directly above the drives it will have a minimum affect. without knowing where the truck in question is set this is an argument that has no out come.

 

I have been solo for two weeks now and I have my first scaling problem.

My steer tires with 5/8 of a tank are at 12420. Drive is 33620 and trailer 31380.

I did in fact set the brakes on the scale. Do you all think if I rescale and do not set brakes that will help my drive tire weight?

 

2009 posted date.......... missed the boat by 8 years. But good for you! Bringing it back from the dead!