Overweight Ticket

What about fueling?

 

Yep, also what about a load with no seal and has other freight added? This goes to my suspicion that CAT, while they guarantee those weights, are not going to refund fines until they see all the records. This is why I am eager to see some postings from drivers that have gone through this with CAT.

Again I am only expressing an opinion. I just get the feeling that CAT guarantee is not as easy to use as CAT makes it out to be.

 

HEY OP READ THE FOLLOWING QUOTES CAREFULLY.

I deal with this often, CAT has yet to fail me or my drivers when it comes to backing their scales. A bunch of times they actually paid for more than the ticket, so stop ignoring the advice - like respond to it and follow what you are told to do.

 

Certified just means the scale meets a certain certification and is calibrated to a ''standard'' and Cat will defend their cert.
So, true and correct at time of weighing.
They certainly can not be liable for weights any where else.
JMO.

 

My Gosh, how many times a year do your drivers scale at CAT and later get overweight tickets? This comment almost made my eyes bug out! seems to me that at some point something somewhere needs to have correction applied.

 

This is very bad information, especially if you have a trailer that dumps trailer bags when the brake button is pulled [there are more of these trailers than many realize. Many makers are recently moving away from this feature because drivers hate them, especially if they have trailer weigh gauges that become useless]. This will throw the weights off drastically as the load is no longer level and no longer in it's normal ride state.

Just get your foot off the brake and let the tractor set and don't use any brakes. If you feel you must set a brake, just set the tractor brakes AFTER letting it set brake-free for a moment. This covers everybody, no matter what their trailer systems do or don't do when setting brakes.

My guess is ether the OP had some portion of some tire(s) setting off of the scale platform, or had the brakes holding it in a contorted state, shifting weight unnaturally

 

I can tell you clearly from personal experience it is VERY easy to not get all of the truck on those scale platforms. In some truck stops especially at night, a driver has to run through an obstacle course just to get on the scale. I once scaled a load in Ohio. As I was walking back to my truck after getting my ticket an old guy called out to me Hoss, your right rear tandem was not all the way on the scale! I had just got loaded at Campbells soup and was very heavy to start with. I re-scaled and discovered I was almost 5K over gross. That old guy might well have saved me some jack that day. Again make sure you are fully on those scales.

 

I've had one this year and three last year.

The ones last years were three trucks being used for the same customer with the same exact load and they hit the same scale about 200 miles away all got pulled in for being heavy. They all got a l1 inspection, the cops filled their quota after that and shut the scale for the day. It wasn't a lot, between 1800 and 2300 lbs heavy on the state scale.

The one this year was the scale right down the road from me, they did maintenance to it that morning and screwed something up, the truck came out of Toledo, hit the Pilot with the Cat scale then it hit the scale going up to Detroit, getting an OW ticket. it wasn't much, I think 890lbs after subtracting the tolerance.

A few other times in the past 13 years but I don't really remember the details.

The point is CAT will defend their scales, they did well by my accounts and I would rather spend $10 or what ever it is now to get it scaled than to deal with a ticket later on.