Got an overweight ticket pulling for Amazon Relay

I am not sure what the contract states as I was not involved with that but I see single axle tractors in the Amazon facilities all the time grabbing trailers. I would figure most of them are registered at 65,000 lbs though.

Most of my Amazon loads are less than 10k lbs, but I question how accurate those weights are as I have sealed up trailers with pallets all the way to the doors and a claimed weight of a little over 4000 lbs on the BOL.

I ran Amazon most of last winter and never had any issues. We are actually running 2 single axle tractors this winter and so far this has been the only issue.

I have gotten 3 loads of "go-carts" which I guess are the carts they fill with individual packages and roll onto the trailers. I have moved 3 trailer loads of them and each time I either got no Bol, or this last time was Xmas Eve and I got only a hand written Bol with no weight on it. They usually aren't going to far.

The really funny part of this was I had another reason to refuse the load. When I arrived to pick up this load I was running about 3 hours ahead of time due to every pickup being ready when I got there. This load was no different so I was excited to be done early that night.

When I pulled the trailer out of the hole I heard a bad air leak coming from the passenger side trailer tires. Figured it was a flat tire but wasn't too worried as they usually bead back up and are fine due to most Amazon trailers have tire inflation systems.

It was still leaking when I did my walk around so I stopped to investigate. The rear axle inside wheel was bent and air was leaking around the tire bead. I flagged down a passing trailer jockey and he radioed a manager to come out.

After showing the manager the bad wheel he said it would be 3-4 hours before he could get anyone out there to fix it. That was going to put me real close on my hours. I had ROC call me and they said I had to wait and see if they could get it fixed before they would take the load off of me.

The manger had me stick the trailer back in hole I pulled it out of and then they kicked me out of the facility as you are not allowed to wait more than 2 hours in the yard. I ran down to the truck stop with the Cat scale and waited.

It was getting to within an hour that I would have to leave to get back to my yard in enough time so I had ROC call me back. They hadn't heard if it had been fixed yet so I called the gate, but no answer. I drove back to the facility and while waiting at the gate the tire truck pulls in behind me.

I jump out and ask the tire guy what his plan of attack was and luckily he has a tire and wheel assembly and just has to swap them out, 15 - 20 minutes max. I am thinking great I should have just enough time.

I pull in and wait, the dang Amazon people didn't even pull the trailer out for him, they made him work on it while it was in the parking spot I left it in which barely had enough room between the trailers to slip through sideways.

After about 15 minutes the tire guy comes up to me and says " I got good news and bad news. Bad news my jack won't work, I think it's froze up. The good news the tire isn't leaking."

I said let me pull it out of there before you go because it was leaking bad before. After taking about 10 minutes to gather his tools back up and move his truck I pull it out of the hole and sure enough it's leaking again.

I really should have thrown in the towel at this point but I am a little hard headed. When you give me a job I try my hardest to do it come hell or high weights.

The tire guy says hold on let me beat on the wheel to try to straighten the bead. He gets under there with a little hammer and starts beating on it, but because it's the inside wheel he really can't get a good swing on it.

After a couple minutes he says he has some propane and he will try to heat the rim, and if that doesn't work he can try to thaw his jack so he can change the wheel. When he said propane I was thinking about a 20 lb bbq tank with a large torch on the end of a hose. He comes back with this little hand held propane torch.

He proceeded to heat the wheel with the propane torch for like 15 seconds and then hammer on it for a while. The temperature that night was in the 20's so that little bit of heating with the torch wasn't doing a dang bit of good, but he was wailing on it as hard as he could and eventually it quite leaking.

Not sure if the heat helped the tire bead become more flexible and help it seal up, or if he actually did bend the wheel back enough from hammering on it, though it didn't really look like it was making any difference.

By this time I didn't have enough hours to deliver the trailer to Baltimore and make it back to my yard. I really should have bailed at this point but then I remembered I could use the short haul exception. So that's what I did.

2 hours later, standing outside the weigh station building freezing my nuts off, waiting for my punishment. ( They wouldn't even let me in the building because of Covid, and I was not dressed for waiting out in 20 degree weather.)
I really wished I had just refused the dam load!

 

I wasn't taking it Chester, VA though that was the final destination on the BOl, I was just taking it to an Amazon facility in Baltimore. I guess another truck was going to finish taking it to Chester.

The officer who ticketed me asked me 3 times what was in the trailer that was so heavy. Each time I told him I have no idea, it was sealed when I got it and the BOL says pallets and Gaylord's, but that's what pretty much all Amazon BOL's say.

I was hoping he would pop the seal and take a look, but he didn't.