How to figure weight distribution?

Center the heaviest skids and work each way will usually work. If you are pulling a spead its pretty easy since you can play a little bit heavier to the rear.

If you have multiple drops then you'll have to look at it a little and you might need to put say your 2nd or 3rd drop ahead of your first to balance if the weights are real screwy.

If you get a fairly evenly spread load that puts you at gross, scale it to see how you balanced and make a note on the ticket. Keep it around and use it to remind you where it stopped and started and let that help you to work it out.

A flat will balance a lot like a van with the same axle setup so think about how van loads get put on with singles and doubles to spread enough weight back and then kinda figure how much you can move the start back if you load it all doubled.

Mistakes happen to the best of us and only the knowledge from scaling loads now will be available later to let you load from memory later. You can't always know how every load will balance on different trailers so other's information is only a guideline.

 

When in doubt, scale it out. If the equipment is your own or the company is willing, get some scales put on the truck and trailer. Every trailer and truck is a tad different, but like already mentioned, if possible have the heavier stuff centered, and work your way out. If not you can also try figuring how much the pallets on the front half add up to versus the rear half. Thats not very accurate though, and that raises the last issue. Even if you are an expert at always spreading out the weight properly, if you are hauling near gross weight, you run the very real risk of being overloaded. They may say each pallet is 5000 when in reality it may be 5100 or 5200 or maybe 3000.. you never know. 100 lbs per pallet/bundle adds up. And you get to pay the ticket. Load scales are around 200-500 each.. or keep paying the 10 buck per trip, either way will be less than the over weight ticket you risk getting.

 

not all trailers bow up. some are just flat out flat.

i load a lot of small loads that are full gross. in the middle. specially if it's tarped. why roll out 2 tarps if you don't have too. AND deal with all that excess tarp.

this step i'm pulling now. has a decal at the exact location the manufacture wants you to load that ONE coil that's full gross. and it's right smack in the middle.

having only a 4 foot spread kinda sucks. according to the atlas you limited to 34 untill your spread hits 8 feet. then you get 38 on the rears.
in other words. anything under 8 feet is considered a tandem axle.

 

Snowwy is right on, if you got a 4' spread you don't have a spread per DOT. So now your weight distribution is even more important. Start in the middle and work it out. If your worried about the trailer breaking, you should be under there looking for small cracks. That will show up long before it collapses, or take it to a shop and have them do a NDI inspection.

Good Luck Driver!

 

If you don't have air gauges get some.

 

There is a cheap way to put scales on a truck. Hanging a short chain from the frame by the axle. I'm on a ph so maybe someone else can go into detail.

 

air guages seem to be the most accurate in my opinion on flat level ground if my tractor guage say 70it means i have 31k even on the drives if i had a trailer guage i dont think i would ever need another cat scale