How did I get away with this?

I have been driving for three years and was under the impression that if you are over 34,000 pounds on the tandems they are going to hand you a ticket. We picked up a load in Arkansas. I was asleep at the time and my wife figured the weights were good since we have loaded there before many times and never had a problem. It was only 37,000 pounds and our truck can haul 46,000. We get pulled in at the point of entry for Oklahoma and they make us weigh and then after what seemed an eternity stopped on the scale they let us go. We proceeded without getting weighed through OK and KS and then get pulled in to weigh in CO and WY. In Wyoming my wife had to stop the truck and bring in her paperwork but they never mentioned anything about her weight. I took over driving in Wyoming and then get pulled in the Utah scale. By this time I’m thinking WTF because we hardly ever get pulled into a scale with our pre-pass and then I slowly roll over the scale and notice that the drives have 24,000 pounds and the tandems have 34,760. Most scales don’t tell you what your axles weigh as you roll over them so this was quite a surprise for me. What was even more of a surprise was the “exit to interstate” sign flashed on and I counted my lucky stars and kept on rolling. My question is did we use up all of our luck for the year on this one trip or does this routinely happen where you are a few hundred pounds over and they just let you go? This isn’t the first time I’ve been lucky with the DOT. I got called in for a level one once in California and air was hissing through the gladhands seal like crazy and the guy let me go with a passing score and told me just to change the seal before I motored on. Another time in Virginia I was 3000 pounds over on the drives and the guy just told me to adjust it and re-weigh and no ticket then either. Am I the luckiest trucker in the US?

 

Maybe they looked in the cab and could see that I was a clean-cut upstanding member of the American populace and therefore cut me some slack.

 

I thought it was just some pretty flags.