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

My local fireman bud told me what their 3 axle firetruck weighs and I could not believe it! I think it was like 80 friggin k!!

 

Yes and no. This is why i record everything and have a dashcam that pushes saved vids to the cloud. The problem here is its a ###### if you do ###### if you dont situation. Ignore or question the cop and your odds of getting jailed or fined go through the roof. Follow his orders after recording it and your almost certan to be fine.

You gotta look at these from both a practicality and cost standpoint. Which one is going to cost you the least in terms of grief, time and money? Sure the cop may be wrong and an #######. Is the cost of argueing with him going to be higher or lower then just complying even if its wrong and letting the lawyer sort it out if things go sideways?

Sadly cops are like any other human and thus falible. There are good cops, bad cops, great cops, corrupt cops and billy bob who just wants his day to be over as badly as you do so he can go home to his pregnat wife martha who is due any time now. They arent inheriently more or less prone to abuse of power then you. Hell in his shoes what he was asking may have seemed reasonable to him even if not.

Now dont misunderstand me im not one of these "the cops are always right and should have more power" people. If they want you to take an 80k truck over a sketchy looking 2 ton bridge, tell them to go to hell. If they want you to take a shortcut up a 5ton road thats otherwise safe because it saves them 20 mins. Just document it and do it if it will cost you less then argueing. Like everything in life the devil is in the details and the truth and/or right choice is almost always somewhere in the middle.

 

Because some states, like Montana for instance, have had so many people beat an overweight ticket from portable scales on the side of the road that they no longer do it. That’s why in MT they only use portables at designated locations and they all have that concrete with the low spot that the scale pads sit in.
And some states, like TX, maintain a list of state certified scales for the officers to use to weigh a truck if they don’t want to use portables. I got weighed on portables on the concrete shoulder in front of the Petro in Amarillo once. There’s a Cat scale right there but the officer said he’s not allowed to pay for a scale and said he’s not allowed to let me pay for a scale.

And some states, like SD and I think NE, if you get weighed on the side of the road but think the weight isn’t correct you’re allowed to request to go to a certified scale. But if you do that then that’s what the ticket will be written from.

So sometimes it’s not as simple as just throwing scales out along the road and weighing a truck.

 

Point being there is plenty of scale houses u can weigh a truck at . So they should not put them selves in hat position and go find something useful to do like writing up chaffed airline violations

 

What if they’re like TX and have a list of available scales they’re authorized to use and are supposed to take them to the closest one? Why was the road posted? Is it truly to prevent road damage or is it simply to prevent thru truck traffic? Nobody knows because we weren’t there,

 

In Texas’ case I can pretty much tell you it is to discourage thru truck traffic. The rural counties that don’t have a big city in them or an oil field for a good tax base will do this more because they don’t have the budget to constantly repair the asphalted roads. If you are driving some kind of farm type of truck or farm type load 99% of the time they will not mess with you if you look like you belong there. If you a mega carrier or other carrier that does not make deliveries around those parts or that is normally on the big roads then watch out.

 

The two little towns I live between have no thru trucks signs and all the roads are the bs 5ton limit. It doesn’t apply to the 300 or so trucks and owners that live in this area. We have two TxDps troopers that live out here and 6 county deputies and 2 constables. They do not bother the residents in trucks unless we are wreckless speeders.

 

Probably the judge would get mad at me for wasting his time and not showing the officer the video before he wrote the ticket. I just don’t trust the system sometimes the courts are in cohoes with the police.

 

The courts are ALWAYS in cahoots with the cops , it’s all about the money.
In most courts the judge and prosecutor and the cop all work for the same podunk town or county .

 

I once got pulled over grossing 150k. I stopped right in the middle of the road because the shoulder looked soft. Of course this made the officer mad. I told him he would take full responsibility if the shoulder gave way. This made him even more mad, but he finally realized that his only option was to let me go.

had a friend that got pulled over onto a soft shoulder with a crane. One side of the crane sank and it turned over.