Weight Distribution across a flatbed trailer?

And how many coils has that AI program secured? Just asking.

 

I believe those moment calculations are wrong because they are calculated from different ends of the trailer. You would add the moments if they were both calculated from the front of the trailer. The way you gave the AI the problem, through it off. The second coil should be calculated as 41' from the front in the first example and 33' from the front in the second example.

 

Yes, that was my thought, too. Just to start with that the difference shouldn't be that big. Anyways, the way you can ask questions and get replies and explanations mow - that has blown my mind. I tried asking in multiple variations and the more precisely and declaratively you lay things out, the more accurate response you'll get.

 

We can ask it for an advise on that, at least. But not follow, as yet.

 

If you belly load or split load, and both loads have the same drive axle weights, you’re putting the same load on the fifth wheel plate.

 

I used to love figuring out multi-piece, varying weight equations! (Can ya sense the sarcasm? )

Even once you get some experience dragging the skateboards around, eventually some shipper will pitch you a curveball you haven't seen yet, or may have seen yet and are still figuring out how to, we'll, make contact with it. This happened to me a good number of times...for the first few times I had Safety on speed dial. Eventually, I just started guessing at it based on what I knew (since by that time I knew the characteristics of both truck and trailer...easy when they're all dang near the same in the fleet.)

Here's one example of this multi-piece equation load I found in my photo book:





Mind you, that was almost a decade ago, but based on the number of chains on those suicide coils I'm gonna guess the two of those together were somewhere between 30-34K, while the skidded coils were probably less than 10K together. I don't remember that being a particularly heavy load; it was just figuring out the positioning and spacing. With stuff like that, I basically just looked at the dimensions of the pieces and measured it out in my head based on the centerline for coil loading (which just about all of TMC's trailers used the center marker light as that benchmark), gave it my best shot from there, and then told the loaders to put it on and then I hoped for the nest. In any situation of doing this, though, I always tried to get the heaviest part as close to center as possible and then schemed around that. You may notice the entirety of that load is a bit further forward than normal. I don't remember what that scaled out to between my drives and tandems, but I do remember it being pretty much dead even for a shot-in-the-dark guess.

That positioning made it a little easier to tarp, as well:



(Because y'all all know how TMC stands for, right? Or at least one of the things it stands for )

 

It happens from time to time, depending on the scalemaster. It everything is working right the two axles should be within 500 pounds max in my experience.

 

Ive never had them weigh independently but have heard of it. As long as the ground is flat and your bags are working properly it shouldn’t be an issue.

 

Depending on the scale and whether or not it shows weight as you're moving on it, I usually checked, and occasionally would see if the front axle and rear axle were off kilter. Most of the time, it could be explained by a levelling valve not functioning properly, but on occassion, especially when I was pulling a 53, I could find differences between the axles. That's where I started learning that if the CAT scale operator was skilled, and they had the multiple plate scales (4 not 3) you could get them to give you the per axle weights, but you could also get them to run it so even the 3 plate scale could do a calculation and come up with an answer. Very few loads I did, did I worry about that, but sometimes....that one load that pulled funny or felt weird, I would check....and usually found it to be the case.