@Heavy Hammer schooled both of us on this a little while ago. As long as you can get a decent guess where the center of gravity of the load is this will work on any load and any trailer. Let's say your loading a 4' 30,000# coil and a 20' 15,000# press. First calculate where on your trailer your center of load should be with this formula. This will never change on a fixed spread. Coils, shingles, pipe, or a 45,000# mother in law chained to the trailer, doesn't matter. Then it's just a matter of balancing your coil and press over this spot. You could set the press all the way to the front as long as you move the coil the proportionate distance to the rear of center. In this example the coil needs to be 50% the distance from center that the press is. Let's say you only have one tarp and it will just barely cover both pieces. You need them to almost touch. As long as the press is evenly balanced (one end not heavier than the other) center the press 8' forward of center, and center the coil 4' foot to the rear. Things are touching and balanced where you need them.
Discussing my scale weight in a Facebook group, someone posted this telling me that I'm scaling my load wrong. I don't recall ever coming across any 3 pad cat scales yet. I could've air they were all 4 pad scales. Am i missing something?
By the way this is my scale ticket with half tanks. Lumber load evenly distributed 4 segments, 6 packs front 6 rear, 8 packs in the two middle segments.
There are still some 3 pad cat scales out there, they are shorter ones. The 4 pad ones are actually 3 with the way they have the scales set up to read weights. Although pads 3 and 4 are seperate they are both linked together to make 1
Kinda what i though as ive been scaling loads like i have for 2 years and not once gotten a ticket. Odds are had i been doing it wrong I'd had gotten once at some point
That's the same thought I had. It works well, I use that center point to load off of. I'll count off stake pockets from that mark to lay out my dunnage and/or measure from there to know where the ends of pipe or rebar etc should be. On my old trailer, I cut some dot tape and put it on the rub rail to help the forklift drivers know where my center is.
The Mill loading your coils will know exactly where to place same. You will eventually learn certain spots on your flatbed deck is also very important. A Aluminum Ravens 48 foot spread axle covered wagon like I had did belly load a coil at about 52,000 pounds give or take a hundred or two hundred pounds this way or that. Such a coil took 20 feet of your deck space exactly centered on the center marker light or exactly 24th feet from either end of the entire deck fore and aft. That was where the center of the coil length wise went. The eye was facing the long ways of the trailer. It stood at 8 feet and some inches high (Or wide as the entire deck which is around 104 inches or was it 102 I cannot exactly remember...) This would be a coil of half inch steel plate. Rolled..... I threw everything I owned onto that coil and through the coil as well as the rubber conveyer belt material that is ususaully between the coils and the angle iron with wooden railroad ties cut to 45 degrees on the load facing surface so that the coil will have a sort of well to ride in does that make sense? The Ravens used two large, extremely large rails under the deck to take the pressure of such a huge coil. I don't recall the exact weights, but the CAT scale tipped 80K, half tanks fuel and me in there and the rear axles split at 40K back there 20K each and the drives were right up there along with the steers. Not only it was TIPPY! It was also dragging ### end heavy back there. Thank god for the Spread Axles... my salvation. I think if they made a 53 foot ravens with a triple axle that was 3 feet inside the back end of the deck for the first one, 8 feet inside for the middle axle and another 8 feet until the front axle you can put more weight on that deck. But you now need a tag axle for a third one installed onto your tractor to start off and possibly a tow truck heavy rotator type three axle drive system put under the new tractor frame long enough to take it and strong enough to take a special 3000 pound torque turned 750 Cummins Similar to what Fire Trucks used to gain power and strength to deal with those massive coil plate loads that will break the nuts of ordinary tractor trailers. That is one coil loaded to the max that day on the Ravens deck versus a 1994 Volvo half bags airride with a N11 cummins engine backed by a rockwell 9 speed. Midroof to be exact with EcKMiller transport out of Rockport Indiana. These loads make a man out of a boy that I was then. These days like 25 years later I would prefer to remain as a 18 year old in my head. And forget about the going old part. Not to mention that company can use a little loosening up as well. They have gotten a bit stiff and stuffy as well as demanding in their treatment of the poor drivers who do not know what they are walking into once they get to Rockport IN from Evansville IN off the bus. But they are after all a billion dollar flatbed company that runs 360,000 loads of coil per year. Not including other loads that you can fit onto a deck. I had a good time there once I found a decent dispatcher. But the volvo was prone to falling apart with a list of 50 to 70 fixing items needing attention after my 6 month tour on the Gulf Coast in the winter of 95' doing nothing but pipe east and chain/cable west between Jaxville Florida and Houston Texas. That was a wonderful winter and my first experiment to never seeing snow and ice at all. Just rain and awful lot of it and a first step to being away from home entirely between March 1 to October 15 each year reserving chain season for to go home and sit all winter growing fat on roast beef and gravy wif salad and taters while everyone else fought old man winter day and night. That is not exactly a good way to try and earn a dollar in the holidays when the frieght volume just bottoms out completly when whole sections of the USA going home for weeks for Xmas, thanks giving etc. leaving you to sit in the hotel a week with nothing to do or haul. Eff that.
