What would you do?

Never trust the on site scale. I will use it but I also stop at the nearest cat scale as well.

 

Have you been to this place before?

 

Was some of this an on-board fuel difference between scale house and load location?
900 over on axle or 460 over/gross, or both? Where was this?

if the scale was nearby the shipper, I think it would be worth a letter to the plant manager to at least inform them of the situation and maybe see if they can have the scales recalibrate, but if you're now 1200 miles away, I don't see you have much of a leg to stand on or be able to verify fuel difference or convince the shipper fuel difference can't be that much. The shipper is not going to offer any help in the matter if you ask me, but what we don't know is what the numbers were at the shipper. Were they significantly different?

 

Bill the shipper. They weighed you by they're scale. It's clearly wrong.

 

Could you have slid your 5th wheel? I.had a similar situation where no more weight could be shifted to the trailer tandems so I had to run the 5th wheel almost all the way forward. Got enough weight off the drives to be "tolerated".

 

I think being almost 500 over gross is going to make it hard to swing that, but I guess it depends on the guy watching the scale.

That being said, if the guy was willing to cut you a break on a cheaper ticket he might have been willing to be even more helpful with more of that weight on the drives.

Op, you don't drive for Us express do you? Because if so you probably could have just had your co driver get out of the bunk for the reweigh.

 

I pull a flatbed and have seen this many times at a customer scale. I have an electronic onboard scale and I know I'm over weight. I end up going to a CAT scale and go back and they are pissed they have to take some off. I think they do this on purpose to ship as much as possible since a lot is shipped by the pound or volume.

 

Never use it unless it's a cat scales, think about it if their weight shows legal and the dot scale shows over weight. Cat scales pays your ticket and deals with them.

If anyone has been through Utah last few years. The west bound scale would be closed because people like me haul barely legal salt loads. And the scale into nv always shows ipthat I am over weight. And seems like after so many people with legal weight cross the scale and it shows over weight it raises a flag. So they get a lawsuit and have to dig out the scale recalibrate it etc. I've seen it completely pulled out of the ground 3 times in 3 years.

 

True that for CAT scales. True that on shippers scales. Anybody's scales, but CAT certifies theirs, they have a zeroing function in their software, and they guarantee their weights.

One question is all I have - how much fuel did you have on board? Full tanks with a heavy load can lead to problems. Good luck, but I would just pay the fine and move on with my nice new learning experience.