45K LBS ON 48’ SPREAD AXLE FLAT

How long is the piece you're loading? You need to find this out.

 

Match the middle of the load with the middle of ur trailer. Usually with the turn signal light on both sides of trailer in the middle. See pic below.

 

Do what @D.Tibbitt said. I used to try and position loads just slightly behind center, since you can get away with so much on the spread, but all that did was make me heavy in the rear, and light in the front. Once I gave up and started using my trailer turn signal as the center point, all my problems went away.

 

Hey, if the "piece" is 100% equal throughout the length is this the ideal way to load in every situation ?

 

Yes thats how i load everything thats gonna put me close to 80k. If u have different pieces with different weights and lengths i will tell them put the heaviest in center and we can piece the load together from there. If u get palletized stuff u can either put it all in the middle or half up front and half on back, depends what u wanna do as the driver...... But to answer ur question is yes if u center the heavy piece it will distribute evenly across the axles... even with heavy coils like this. 45k coil loaded directly in center im legal on all axles. If it was forward more id be overweight on drives..



Then u get these rock loads that weigh different amounts each pallet and becomes a huge jigsaw puzzle but the concept is the same start with heaviest in center and work ur way outwards... i loaded these rocks all summer and was able to get legal just eyeballing weight and using air gauge on drives to determine where im at. Helps when u pull the same equipment every load. I can count on 1 hand how many scale tickets ive bought this year .

 

Really good information - my whole 16 years of driving I’ve never really “had to” load properly because I’ve never went over scales - now that I’m down here in the Americas, plus doing more OTR stuff I’ve been crossing them quite regularly and have to plan my loads out a little more!