5,800 lb oops

Only time I have ever loaded where I had to figure out each trailer, I always got my empty weight and split the difference. Most places I loaded on a scale under a silo or conveyor. More then once the plant guys have overloaded me. Usually only around 2k though. Blow off for about 5 or so minutes, hit the road. Just sucks when there is a line of 10+ trucks and they have to shut down a scale to let you do it.

 

That makes it a pain. I've never done the vacuum stuff. I worked for a place where they did it with train cars, I never did one of those runs though.

 

Ive done that before transloading flour from a rail car. No trailer gauges so just use the tractor gauge and a hammer on the side of the trailer. This one particular load was in a trailer that loads all in the front because of the way the axles are under it. Got up to about 70 pounds on my suspension gauge and about 1/2 up the rear slope of the rear hopper from the sound of my hammer. Went and weighed and I was at almost 110,000 gross when I was shooting for 102,000. Loaded right about 72,000 pounds but my order called for 64,000. So back into the rail car it went. Lol

 

This was always a problem, our loader used to look at the amount loaded in the railcar and determine how much each load HAD to weigh. He had an oversize blower and knew the right spot to throw a rock at to see if it was enough...he vacuumed 4 - 6 loads a day every day. I always knew when I overloaded, the road out of the yard wasn't paved and Matlack's R models had Armstrong steering so you knew at the first turn in the gravel that you had too much.

 

I got tired of the Redfield people loading me to 110K in flyash. Dragged it back to west little rock to spend over a hour blowing it. So I started blowing down to 80K legal inside Redfield and my bosses said is there suddenly a problem? Why are we wasting 20 minutes blowing off? Without realizing a 80K tanker will blow off to his silo in 45 minutes rather than a hour and change. Duh.

In my early bulk days we loaded directly on the scale. 80K DING! Snap the bolts and take off. (Actually 77,400 for a mack and 40 foot tanker, but no one enforced that in my time...) My molded stack of cement logs show about 350K pounds delivered daily 5 days a week for months. Millions of pounds easy. Most of which went into the cement divider in the middle of I-270. and at the Pentagon SIlos in Arlington.