I am confused on my CAT Scale weight

I keep mine dead between the drives and never move it. Of course, that's easier to do when you are able to move your load around.

 

I move mine occasionally especially in winter. I will try to have 13500 on my steer when I go through the scale, then if the roads are slick move a ton back to the drives, and get all the weight I can on them.

 

On my Cascadia, with the 5th wheel in the same place some loads make the front axle heavier some lighter and I never could figure out why! Drop and hook dry van, so the only thing I can think of is that somehow different trailers transfer weight differently but that doesn't make sense.
But some days with full tanks I could be right at legal on the front, and several hundred under on the drives, and other days I could be right on on the drives and several hundred under on the steers.
The only variable that I could see being the trailer swap.

Maybe it has something to do with how much weight is in front of the pin as opposed to behind the pin?

Or maybe it's just that some days the rear suspension sits differently, the airbags don't equalize the same or something, and so it's actually a difference between the two drive axles shifting the true center of support.

 

Air bags should not have a say in it. Different trailers can sure be different, depending on pin setting, every load can and will be different, depending on how much weight is loaded where on the trailer, positions of the tandems will change it, etc.

 

Makes zero difference how far the weight is in front of the kingpin on the trailer in regards to weight transfer to the steer axle. The connection point where weight transfers to the tractor frame is always the 5th wheel.

 

The same weight will always be there on any certain load and the same amount will transfer from one to the other, but that can all change when you change loads or trailers.
Once it is hooked up and loaded, all you can do is move x amount off of one and put the same x amount on the other one.

 

I usually slide my 5th wheel all the way forward to reduce the gap between my truck and trailer. The same goes for my trailer tandems, all the way forward to be right behind the trailer skirt. This reduces air drag, therefore, increasing your MPGs. If the deadhead will be less than 30 miles, I tend to just leave it as it is.

 

I don't cuz I make some crazy tight turns going to a lot of John Deere mom-and-pop facilities delivering riding lawn mowers and up to 5 series tractors... and I don't want to bunch up a fairing.
plus I'm old school I used to like the long and tall California set up with a spread axle reefer watch those profits go right up into the sky LOOOL

 

Your advice will probably prevent many people from hitting their truck fairings, especially newbies. I have always been very cautious while backing and have never hit any fairings. I have lost count of how many times I’ve had to tell my former students to stop because they were jackknifing the truck too much and were getting very close to hitting the truck against the trailer.

 

Heck, just get you one like mine, with the 310 inch, you wont be too close to the fairings till the trailer tandems are up there where you can look at them. lol
I see more guys crumpling their fairings by overshooting the fifth wheel when hooking up than any other way. lol