History of the 500lb per hole rule?

the Fed's have made it possable to hold the shipper liable for over loads to some degree so more of them are getting smarter and trying to cover them selfs with the paper work that you know you are picking up loads that can't be made legal because the shipper is getting a cheap ##### rate and wants all he can get on each truck if he ships 5000 lbs more than he should on each truck 8 trucks and he gets a free one.

 

I had an instructor in school who devised a formula sliding tandems based on your gross weight. It makes sense that its going to vary based on your load. My husband, a veteran driver, was skeptical until I made him give it a shot. We scaled out.. used the formula, and was amazed how close we were on re-weigh. Here's the formula:
Gross X .52% = lbs. moved per hole on 6” slider

example 80,000 lbs. X .52% = 416 lbs. and 75,000 lbs. X .52% = 390 lbs.

LOL this is probably going to get a lot of eyerolls, but don't knock it til ya try it

 

I can see how that might work if your load is all even stevens and the same throughout but if your nose heavy or tail heavy Im not sure, I guess it would give you a place to start and probably close to where you have to be but..........if you look at those examples there is only a 26 lb difference per hole for 5,000 lbs which is nothing when sliding axle's so with those figures in mind, with a load close to maxed out you can skip the math and just use a set figure which would get you in the ballpark also

 

Give the man a cigar...he has it right The origin. Actually, there were 2 rules. One was 500, the other was 300. Depending on the spacing between the holes. The 5th wheel has no "preset" amount. Since you can single out the nose, or double stack the nose. But, 200-250 is a good starting point.

Now days, I use the 1% per hole rule on the tandems. It seems to work pretty good. But then again. It depends on the load, and how it's loaded.

 

I usually keep it on the 8th or 9th hole and if im over 40,000 I just slide to the 10th hole I never had any weigh fines either. I still weigh if im over 40,000 though and if im heavy on a certain axle I just slide towards trouble. example lets say im on the 8th hole and my trailor axle is 34,550. I slide the tandems back 3 holes by moving the truck forward im now on the 11 hole and should be legal. I always use the 250 pound rule not 500.

 

I start by assuming I'll move 500 lb per 5th wheel notch, and 250 lb per tandem hole. That usually gets me real close to right, with a minimum amount of trying.

 

i got my fifth whel dead set 3/4 ways back to or 3 knotches from the back of frame then got the tandems set on the 9th hole... guess i am always right... i stopped weighing out after i had got it right and the boss told me to just stop weighin and if i am overloaded they (chicken coop) will usually let ya move your stuff around...... its happened to me a few times.. just go in find out where ya overloaded at then just move it.... bing bang boom .....and you on your way again after they reweigh ya....
what i did to get the figure right is, if you got the same truck and trailer all the time i weighed my combo out at tanks half full. and then asked around what a gallon of diesel weighed figured it all out on full tanks.. took me a while to figure all the numbers out but after a while, you can pull into the shipper see what it weighs and just set the tandems and roll out...
if you are a numbers guy it is easy... was easy for me

good luck jugg

 

That depends on what state your in. I got an over weight ticket in Kansas for being 1700 lbs over on my drives that cost me 123. dollars and then i had to move my tandems to get legal before i could leave. Its cheaper to weigh at a cat scale before you get to a state scale.