Weird drive axle weight situation

They let you settle when you roll over the scale at the weigh stations. I pull lots of totes, and when I first hit that scale my steer axle might be close to 1000 over, then it settles in 8 or 10 seconds.

I'm sure this is a silly question, but you were on the CAT scale correctly right? Like no tandems touching the edge of the scale?

With your weights as you gave them, I'd have slid that 5th wheel back, then re-weighed. If that didn't do it, I'd slid the tandems, the combination of both should have gotten you legal all the way around.

I'm sure this is silly question #2, but you do know how to set up the truck yes?

 

Definitely an odd situation to get 3 cat scale weight pretty close, but a CMV scales weight a 1,000 over [axle]. If the driver is holding the foot brake pretty hard after stopping kind of hard on the scale, that could shift and hold a lot of weight, especially if some brakes are out of adjustment and/or there is otherwise some brake imbalance issues going on between the tractor and trailer.

BRAKE BALANCING | Today's Trucking

 

You've got it wrong. It causes the separate scale plates to pull together/push apart putting more, or different stresses on the load cells the scale rides on. Could be more lateral force which won't read on those kind of cells.

 

It's not odd at all, he stated he set his brakes, and almost all modern trailers dump their air when you set the brakes, this is shifting weight from the drives to the trailer. In other words, due to driver error he went cross country 1k pounds over on his drives while thinking he was legal.

 

You understand how to slide the tandems and the 5th wheel if necessary to make your axle weights legal?

 

CAT scales are only "certified" for the gross, NOT the individual axles. If the gross weight was OK, you probably won't get much help fighting an axle weight ticket.

 

I understand that. He is way under gross. Nobody is writing that ticket when he has a scale ticket to back him up. He weighed twice. At best a two bit ticket and roll. I would fight it. Not worth it I guess. It's hardly a fine at all from the weights I see.

 

Yeah. Scale tickets are a joke. $32 in CO for 2500 over gross >_>