Scaling a Tanker

It's a tanker, the load constantly moves. Your not going to get your fifth wheel legal. As long as your not over legal gross, you should be fine.

A lot of owner ops I've met in food grade tanks have unmovable fifth wheels.

 

104K Gross? 41K drives and 50K tandem?

Forget it. You introduce new dangers and it's not worth it.

Ive some experience with liquid tanker work and frankly it is a load that moves. If you put too much into it then your trailer may actually fail at some weak point and possibly endanger life.

I hate to be so harsh, but life depends on keeping the weights reasonable.

Not too long ago I had a little rock cement plant insist on allowing 95-105K gross on fly ash in a bulk tanker aboard a old international 9800 pay star I think it was. I would off load until the scale said roughly 80K to conserve for the 12 mile run from Redfield to Little Rock downtown.

The other location in Hope AR had a scale that stoppped at 80K gross perfect, actually around 79800 to allow for my weight and a few dallops of fuel.

Long ago we run a R model Mack with a cement tanker and did not load at the seaport in baltimore beyond 77K which was at the time a proper scale axle etc for the 40 foot tanker. But we would load it to 80K anyway because the company paid a small extra for heavier loads. You made so much money each day that if you hit a Maryland scale or virginia scale kind of heavy somewhere you could afford the ticket and keep going. So they did not matter.

 

If sliding the 5th wheel went loaded. Drop the landing gear tell you cant really crank it anymore then drop you air bags to take the remaining weight off the plate then it will slide easp peasy.

 

I haul smooth bore tankers everyday. And yes you can get 5th wheels legal by moving them. It all depends on the trailers. Some of my tanks I have to be 6" behind the front driver others 6" in front of the front axle. I have a 60" driver spread and around a 7' slide on my 5th wheel.

 

Im sure Cat SDP is loading something like this.

This is my normal set up. This is a 7000 gallon 2 compartment tanker. Scaled out at 101,000 with 62,000 pounds of Sodium Hydroxide which is ruffly 12.8 pounds per gallon. 29,000 pound in the front 33,000 pounds in the rear. Which put me at 53,000 pounds on the tractor. So having 2300 gallons front and 2600 gallons rear ruffly makes for a very interesting ride in a smooth bore trailer.

 

Sounds like you love wasting time, or you have a stretched frame and actually moving the 5th wheel for you makes for a better ride. Either or, but it isn't to make it legal.

What do you think the pressure plates are reading while a loaded tanker cruises across them at the scale? The drives should in theory have slighlty less weight than the trailer tandems.

Now let me ask this, if 5th wheel weights on tankers were such a huge problem, why do tankers have stationary trailer tandems?

Beeecccccaaaaaauuuuuuuussssssssseeeeeee it's a tanker. The down force of the load is equal front to back on some trucks, then on my truck the frontbis naturally lighter than the rear because I have a 4 inch lift in my 5th wheel.

Then on other trucks the load falls to the middle or maybe the load goes to the front due to a lower tractor.


Come on, were not talking about stationary pallets sitting on top of the drives, where the down force above the 5thwheel never changes.


I just read you second post about having two compartments ...... Still pointless, but I got time to kill I'll bite.

 

How is it 2 compartment, but smooth bore? Is there a wall in the middle that seperates the loaded parts to where they can't touch? That is 2 compartment in my opinion. Like a milk tank set up. Smooth bore has no wall in the middle, way different as far as weight distribution goes.