Why don't driver's scale their loads?

I had to go get a trailer that a driver left at the I5 scales house north of the grapevine. Over on the tandems by 1500ish and at 41.5 bridge. That was a fun night.

 

I'm in chemical tanker business, so as an O/O I watch the loads and weight like a hawk, especially now that I have to throw my APU into the mix too. As long as I'm good on my drives primarily, I've never had a problem. Sometimes though I have to slide the fifth to even out the weight on the trailer. My 2006 Pete 387 is notoriously heavy on the steers and routinely I'm at 13,400 to 13,600 average. But on occasion I've had to get tough with a shipper who wants to load me too heavy because of the excuse that the receiver needs this amount on the trailer. I politely tell him, no way Jose. It's my load, my truck, so you do it my way or not at all.
They think I'm joking at first but back down once they realize I'm sticking to my guns.
The problem as I see it is that some wing nut drivers will risk it and take the load even though they are over 80K in weight, so the shipper thinks we should all do the same. Some drivers are weak, and don't like to say no.
With chemicals my task is a little easier as scaling in and out is routine, but sometimes I may be assigned a pre loaded trailer. That's when you have to watch out. NO is a very powerful word in this regard. But it gets the dispatchers attention.
Good luck

 

Since my new truck doesn't have any indicator on the dash I'm forced to scale nearly everything.

I picked one up recently where the driver slid the tandems all the way forward before parking it… in a pull through spot at a company terminal with acres and acres of parking. I ran it up on the scale and it was about 3K over on the trailer. I had to make two adjustments and was barely under 34K when I reached the maximum length for the states that I would be driving through. I don't know what people are thinking sometimes.

I don't trust air gages on trailers. The only overweight ticket I ever got was when I worked for a company that would not reimburse for scales if the BOL declared that the load was under 42K pounds. The trailer gage was way off and the shipper lied by about 5K pounds. I took pictures of the gage with a scale readout next to it and emailed it to the company, pitched my case and they paid it for me.

 

About 6 months ago, I came across a truck driver who hauls gasoline for a living. He had told me that he routinely hauls as much as 100,000 pounds being an intercity driver. He mentioned that he does NOT have to worry about scales at all. From the looks of it, local drivers can get by hauling overweight loads much easier than an OTR driver.

God bless every American and their famiies! God bless the U.S.A.!

 

Heck if the locals had to worry bout scalin--there would be a LOT more local driving jobs--LOL
Any idea how much corn you can get in a 48' hopper? Just for an example---or how much does a 3 axle side loader of Budweiser really weigh--full of bottles and kegs?

 

Why don't I scale? I figure my heavy loads of 15k in the box will be alright.

Until they get in an accident.

Once a year my company brings in an officer who does accident reconstruction. It's one of those things where you're basically told everything will end up being your fault and everyone will be trying to sue you type of thing. Very informative though. One example he uses is a tanker who has criminal charges filed against him for running a red light and killing someone. For charges to be filed it must be proven that you were reckless. One of the keys to deciding that he reckless was the fact that he was overweight, had taken 5 other loads that day that were overweight, and had been told by his company to stop loading overweight.

It can all catch up to you very quick.

 

I have a loads cake gauge in my truck that measures the drive axle weight, and is accurate within 100-150#. Thanks to that, and my spread axle trailer, I no longer worry about scaling loads anymore. If I have a 40,000 pound coil centered on the deck, and the gauge is showing 20000 pounds, I can be reasonably sure the trailer is legal, too.

I know...I work too darned hard!

 

When you go to the same place every day you know exactly how to go around that scale.

 

There are drivers that don't know how to scale a load. Saw a driver circle the lot three times to scale out at a customer's scale (one of those places that require you to scale the load on their property before they let you leave). Each time he was overweight on the drives, and each time he circled the lot and reweighed....

... without getting out to adjust the trailer tandems or the 5th wheel slide.

Finally he came up to me and said, "I've scaled it three times and the weights aren't changing."