Forced to drive on a 5 ton road to get to scale for inspection.

And no, you wouldnt have been held accountable for bridge damage if that would have occurred. You were complying with the officer, even a bad lawyer would have a field day with that one.

 

This is one of those grey area cases. In most instances you are complying with a law officer. And as its not unusual for them to send heavy trucks up low tonage road in events like fire, flooding, wrecks and the like. You should in throry be covered and anything that happens would be on the officer as a result unless you do something truely stupid like go over an old antique bridge that clearly wont support you, or under a 11'6" bridge with a 13 foot truck.

However, as far as most non truckers are concerned we drivers are little more then animals and less then that in many cases. So there is always a chance they will attempt to take a dump on you if something gets broken. But in most cases as long as you are complying with the officer you should be able to win any lawsuit or ticket that results from complying.

 

I find it hard to believe if something bad happened that everybody and their mother wouldnt try to throw the trucker under the bus and the cop would be the first one in doing that...

 

Its less that we dont think he would get thrown under his own truck and backed over a few times. And more that if something happens while complying there is a better then 90% chance you would win a lawsuit. Especially if you record the incident.

 

Unfortunately it seems hard to find a professional and knowledgeable leo these days. Nothing wrong with questioning authority, especially when something seems so blatant. "I "think" you're overweight, follow me down this 5 ton limit road to the scale"....then when he gets you to the scale he writes a ticket for driving down the 5 ton limit road, you never know with these guys, dash cams are our friends, unfortunately sometimes in towns the crookedness runs even further up the food chain. "Truck Enforcement" means "Revenue Generator", that's what it should really say on their vehicles.

 

True, but not with me because i would record the officer telling me to follow him over said bridge. End up on youtube lol

 

What if a highway was shut down and a cop or cops routed all traffic through an otherwise truck restricted road through a city or fancy neighborhood. Would you sit there all day questioning them or just go on with the flow?

All the little county roads in Texas have a 5 ton limit dating back to at least the 1950’s. It is outdated and rarely enforced. All 1ton pickup’s pulling a loaded utilty or travel trailer will be overweight on those roads these days.

 

In that case he's keeping the traffic moving due to a highway shutdown, I would probably go with the flow. In the case of the OP here, cop "felt" like the truck was overweight, didn't know any other route to the scale, gets angry at the driver for questioning the route to the scale, who needs this in their life? Cop sounded like a jerk.

 

This happens all the time in the grain hauling world. Cops will have you follow them to a scale way out of the way of the co-op silos. Down some sketchy roads. Nature of the beast. Happens every so often out in bfe in the oilfields. Depending where you were and how far from the Sarita scale when hauling cattle out of the King or Anderson Ranches they would do it too. And most of those are gravel roads.

 

Why don’t they just carry scales in their car? Here, they weigh you anywhere from a parking lot to the shoulder of the road.

I did hear a story of a officer who followed a truck into the paper mill and wanted to look at the scale reading when he scaled in. Thankfully the lady in the scalehouse completely went off on the guy and ran him out of the place for trespassing.