Load Canceled After 60+ Loaded Miles

Surprised that the OP didn’t realize immediately that they were overweight. I definitely can feel the difference between 80k and 75k on my setup. A 10 k overage on a hot shot most certainly would have set off the alarm bells in my head before leaving the loading area.

 

Concorde brought up the thing I had in the back of my mind: you'd better make sure the scale 60 miles away was the FIRST place you could have scaled at, because otherwise it's gonna be a tough road.

But mostly I'm responding to see the discussion. I'm curious to see how this turns out since I see both sides of the argument.

 

Hmmm I didn’t want to break my equipment and there was two scales 190 mile run 60 covered so minus the 60 return miles your 70 miles away plus the scale detours if you continued trip..

 

Shipper and or Broker trying to get out of paying for 8 tandem's and pocket the difference ?
Would not be a surprise to me..

 

From a broker's perspective: while there was a breakdown in communication *somewhere* - nobody here is free of guilt. You moved without knowing your laden weight, which would have been easily verifiable by pulling up the CAT website. CAT has spec sheets on all of their generators. For instance: I'm looking at a CAT 3512C 60HZ model, just as an example. It has the following dimensions: 248.6" L x 89.8" W x 110" H. The listed dry weight is 30,790lbs.

CAT does a pretty good job of having spec sheets for *all* of their equipment. I did a couple of other quick checks of gensets in different weight classes. A cursory search taking approximately five minutes would have saved you 120 miles of driving.

What I will ask is this: At what point did you determine you were overweight? Was it just hitting the scale? What did the other hotshots do, do you know? The thing is, whether or not there were two scalehouses ahead of you, you still drove 60 miles before the situation came to a head. My inclination is what @blairandgretchen said - take the TONU, and call it good. What it'll come down to, realistically, is where was your first opportunity to stop and scale?

 

Verifying the dimensions of the product being shipped sounds like something the broker should be doing. There is no way I would expect a carrier to have to scour data sheets to verify dimensions unless they are hauling direct, because the broker is in a prime position to acquire the information. They should be the ones to take 5 minutes to hop online and verify a few things, so that they can be sure they're able to accurately input the dimensions on the load board or discuss it during negotiations.

The driver is still responsible for making sure they're legal, but not because they should be expected to do the broker's job.

 

I have had a few shippers that I know the just throw out a number.
The machine is 8 foot wide and the crate adds another 6 inches.
So 8 wide just turned into 8.6
Oh and that 3 inch valve up top hangs out another 6 inches.
Now your 9 wide and they don't want to pay for permits or understand why they are needed.
Their saving money and want it cheap too.

 

Sure. Not suggesting that the broker shouldn't have done that. They absolutely should have done so, in fact. Part of why I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that CAT has pretty good specs on their equipment readily available is because *I* do that. But, by that same token, as the carrier, OP is also responsible for making sure that they can run the load legally. And the shipper is also responsible for letting the broker know accurately, what they have outgoing. In the end, what I am saying is this: every single party in this, from the shipper, to the broker, to OP bears some level of responsibility in the failure that took place here.

 

What honestly perplexes me in all of this is how anyone in this process, from shipper, to broker, to carrier thought a containerized genset was going to be 10k lbs. A 40' standard is roughly 8k lbs by itself, and a high cube is like... 8800lbs. That's before you start accounting for mounted equipment in it.

The simple fact is that everyone involved in this pulled a dumb.

 

I verify dims and weights on everything: i’m liable if there’s an issue, so I don’t trust that everyone else on the chain has taken their job as seriously.
I also touch base with shippers and receivers to make sure everyone knows as well because I don’t wanna get hung up at any given point.. It’s me & my equipment going to be delayed; nobody else’s