Shipper screwup and wasted time

Do your drivers all have psychic-scaling abilities?
Are you one of the X-Men?!?!

I wish I had the nerve to boss people around when I only think I know what's going on.

Sometimes I get mad at the toaster when I put bread in and bagels don't pop out.... Nothing irrational about that.

 

No they have on board weighing systems. It is installed when the truck is new and checked every year.

 

I would have weighed the load on route, stopped there and got dispatch back to shipper to rework weight. Since shipper is closed weekend, I would have stayed put in that truckstop with the onroute cat scale. I would not go out of route for a closer scale.

Finally I useally keep a tare empty cat weight of a one month or newer and count the BOL's to come up with approx what is in the box. If the shipper knows how to document everythinng you will already know pretty good from math and also from your gauges (Such as the airpressure in suspension on drives being slightly over say... 53 pounds for over axle on drives. (Im flat guessing now, Ive been away a while)

I would also get new appt time and used the weeknd to pull the reset of sorts until waking up early monday morning and rolling towards to the shipper to rework the load. They can scream, complain, yell, moan etc but that #### thing is getting reworked one way or another. ESPECICALLY if it is a aft tandem axle sitting underneath the company applied kingpin to tandem distance for CA for example.

Most likely I will be black listed from that shipper ever again after the rework of load. Which generally cleans up my overall loading times and less of problems within the company.

You will want a little bit of downtime chasing women, wine, song and so forth. Whatever lights your fire and gets you away from your monotonus troubles in trucking and low morale. Get that resolved before something really bad happens.

 

I've had more than a few shippers who would not rework a load until you provided a current certified scale ticket. They would not rework a load based on pressure gauges or onboard scales or driver's suspicions.

But, at least having them, you can know it's probably worth the OOR miles and loss of time that may be involved to get the certified weight, if that's what is required.

 

So providing them with your own certified pressure gauge certificate is not enough?

Do they also provide proper documentation of their own calculations....or do they just expect you to take their word for it?

I would trust my equipment more than their "guestimate"....and if they act up, they can off-load their stuff out.

I tend to side with @x1Heavy on this one....I'd prefer to be blacklisted (and never engage again) which in effect, cleans out the undesireables from my prefered list.

 

Most onboard scales are not all that accurate. Certainly not as accurate as most pay scales. I've seen them refuse to properly calibrate and be off 800-1100 pounds. If I was a shipper, knowing what I know, I'd not be too inclined to rework a load because he says he is 800 over at California setting based on his scale readout.

Granted, pressure gauges are probably more "accurate" then digital ones requiring constant calibration, but only to the driver who pulls that same trailer all the time. Not to mention the fact that many don't fully understand the need for smooth and level grade to get meaningful and accurate numbers to the extent it's possible.

 

If a shipper ever tried to pull that crap with me then they would take the entire load off and find themselves another truck. I know exactly what my unit weighs and know how to load it, it gets loaded my way or it doesnt get loaded.

 

Thank you, I put trust in my drivers to deal with it, if they don't like it, I am not going to lose sleep over being unloaded because the shipper refused to do things right.

I've be called in the middle of the night because my driver refused to move. The last time it cost the customer an addition $1100 for this mess, the driver had it removed, then the company called him first then me demanding he pick it up and I told them it will cost the customer plus the driver will supervise. He made the pickup, then he called with his departure info and told the dispatcher he is going to reset his hours because he has 5 left on the clock and she had no choice. I heard about it later that day and said to the driver "good job", it was an easy $7800 for us.

 

CAT Scales are calibrated through a network of certified technicians with equiptment verified at about 19 master scales under which more ordinary CATS are calibrated regularly fairly often. They do a good job, toss a bible onto it and it will "Feel" it.

As far as the suspicition, guesswork etc I tell them three things.

Fact- Truck is so and so heavy tare.

Fact- your load papers show 50000 in box. Too much gross.

Fact take it off until You have 47600 or whatever product in the box.

And done. They cannot argue with facts.

 

unless it's raisins there is a back door and a trash heap! Or any body want free bananas? on the CB go ahead ask I dare ya. kittypower