Truck hauling paper rolls on Wa. ramp

90 thousand pound load of paper.........yeah.......sure.

 

BOL would show the amount of the paper on it.

 

Taking a look at the pix, it obviously is an oversize (weight) rig.

 

'bout 8 axles......

 

The truck was probably around 90,000 pounds gross weight. Most of paper loads that I hauled were between 55k to 63k.

That much weight tends to prefer the direction it was going and doesn't react kindly to sudden changes of course.

 

A gross weight of 90K+ is pretty common in the Northwest. There are a lot of trucks registered for 105K. Mainly because of agriculture and the paper industry. We see lots of trucks with a tag axle hauling a three-axle-plus-tag-axle trailer.

This guy might have been registered for 96K. Either way, the reporter misquoted the trooper. Washington's troopers are smart enough to know the difference between payload and gross weight.

 

I think it has become the norm to question the weights given in a news story, given the history of inaccurate weights reported by the media outlets. But this one appears to be right.

 

It's pretty much the norm to question ANY statements made by the media any more. They are either slanted toward the reporter's (et al) outlook, they are misinformed, or they sensationalize it to make it sound "better."