Overweight!

Only thing I can think of is the op did a fast, sudden, or hard brake.Have to watch that when hauling freight.A company I drove for 3 yrs,almost every load was a paper load and never have they shifted.But 8 feet is a lot especially with rolls of paper because they're heavy rolls.In the future smorgan,watch your shifting, turning and braking so the load doesn't shift and so it doesn't damage the load.

 

smorgan87,

Did you scale it or did you take someone else's word on it?

If you did scale it, did you keep the scale ticket?

 

My suggestion would be to contact an attorney and give them every little detail surrounding the incident. In the end, the driver is responsible for whether the truck is overweight or not but maybe the attorney can find some extenuating circumstances to get the fine at least knocked down some?

 

If I scale a load, the load is legal and I have a ticket from a CAT scale showing it is, and I get an over weight fine, REGARDLESS of if the load shifted or what not, I take ZERO responsibility and the company should be responsible for all costs stemming from the citation. Why would we want to claim fault or responsibility? Our job is to drive, not lay down, roll over and raked over the coils for over weight citations after going through the effort to prove the load is legal.

 

I had a load shift on me. I backed up real fast and hit my brakes it slid right back, they reweighed me and I drove on, and of course it slid back.

 

From reading your statement it seems that your defense for being overweight is that you are a bad driver. The ticket was given to you. That should point out that you are the one responsible for seeing to it that your tractor is weighted correctly. Your argument that the load shifted is still your responsibility. So in legal terms you are toast.

Now here is the best you can hope for. For them to win they have to prove you were overweight. They will have to show up in court with the records showing that the scales were examined on a certain date and that they are in fact correct. The person running the scales that day will have to show that they have all the necessary training to weigh a vehicle. You can call your own experts. You will lose. And then you appeal. You will still lose. So the best you can do is hire an attorney to negotiate it down. Not going to happen. The cost of having your drives six thousand over weight is $3500 and the state has no reason to change it. All you can do is arrange to make payments with the court. They will give you time. You will have to pay it all off in a year. 12 payments of 291.67.

If you miss a payment, your license will be suspended. I wish I had better advice but unless someone knows somebody, you are screwed.

 

How do you defend this statement? You are and will be held responcible for the load until it is signed for at the other end. If the load shifts you will be the one seeking a place to have it fixed or fixing it yourself. Yes CAT will represent you if the load is scaled out correctly, but not for load placment or in the event of a shifted load. Driver error is not an excuse nor is accpting sealed loads without first asking to see it.