DOT allow over weight when pulling reefer?

About this APU thing. It's been my experience from observing weight enforcement over the years that it is not a big deal. If a scalemaster calls you in most of the time you are way past the tolerance anyway. Most of these scales across america are not that pinpoint accurate. Getting hit all day long with trucks weighing thousands of pounds tends to do this. The scalemasters know this. If your 400 pounds over on your tractor drives most scales are just going to wave you on past. Some will wave you past if your a thousand over. If you get called in and told you are 1500 pounds over and pull that APU thing out expecting to get that cut to 1100 your going to get laughed at. Trust me on this. If every scale house in america tightly enforced that 12 34 34 thing they would be writing overweight tickets by the thousands every single day. You need not worry about that 400 pound APU exemption. Its already factored in. I'm not saying there are not prick scalemasters out there. Im saying by in large most of them are not concerned about 400 pounds.

 

I kept things simple so I don't confuse the new ones.

Thank you for your time explaining the front end situation.

 

One morning I was a training tool when I got onto the I-70 New Market Scales. Legal weight for my short mack and 40 foot was 77400 I think it was roughly. I was at 80000. There I sat at 4 am in front of a big hat bear pointing out my sins in the big lights to the 20 or so white shirted tied trainees.

I was thinking about how best to leave the industry figuring on being bankruptcy when they finished writing a stack of citations etc. When they gave the green light.

 

I always go by the 1% over never really been messed with for 340 pounds or less over on a set of tandems.

 

Nope.

 

Oh by the way. This scale accuracy topic is not something a lot of scalemasters will admit. However every once in a while you will find that one who will tell you the truth. I had a scalemaster in Kentucky tell me once he was not worried about hundreds of pounds. He did not start writing paper till it was thousands of pounds. Most of those old static scales have either been replaced or are not being used. Those scales were notorious for being thousands of pounds off. Some were so old and wore out they could not be calibrated. Like I said you try getting hit with thousands of pounds all day everyday.

 

Many years ago I had a diesel cop to tell me he was sorry about stopping me to inspect. He said unless it was a major thing found I would be OK. It seems that his big boss from Raleigh was in the scale house and he needed to get lost for a while. Best $25 bucks I ever made.

 

You guys are splitting hairs trying to justify being overweight.

The guy with the badge makes that determination if you are or not when you are closed to your limit.

The scale being off isn't their problem when it comes to being 2000lbs over because they stuffed the reefer full pallets of heavy frozen food, it is yours.

The apu thing is not reconignzed by all states, it is not a regulation that is a blanket reg.

 

Agreed, almost all of the time when a driver gets red lighted and told to come in they are not just 400 pounds over. Most of these drivers need to understand that 400 pounds and the 550 pounds are in most states factored in already. This is a lot like how cops handle speeding. Unless your dealing with a prick cop you are not going to get a ticket for 1 or 2 miles over. Most cops just don't write those kind of tickets. Weight enforcement is very much like this.