When do you scale?

Well this is what I always told my students. When in doubt, weigh. $9 is cheap insurance against a 2-3-4 thousand dollar ticket. If the gross product weight is 30,000 or more weigh. If you are not sure of you axle weight or the weight is not balanced between drives and tandems, Weight. It is better to spend $9 to find out everything is good to go then to be stuck at the scales trying to figure out how to correct you laziness.

 

well i was always told that you never legal till you scale,
and not only that, but if u givin an o/w ticket thats ur record and ur money. not the company u work for,
ur a proffesional driver, ur supposed to no ur load, and no the weights,
i have a volvo, and i have air guages in the dash that let me no how heavy i am on the steers and drives, but only by psi, and when i got the truck i scaled everything, so that i could get an idea of where my psi guage cant go above, ie, my steers cant go above 104psi, and my drives cant go above 62-63 psi or ill be over, 104psi will put my steers at about 12,300, and 63 psi will put my steers right at 34,000 even!
but those guages are just to give an idea.
most people will tell u they no when to scale just by driving a few feet, others say they scale if the load is above 37,xxx punds,
just my .02s

 

We scale every load at a CAT scale (usually can find one of those)...never trust a shipper's scale.

 

it also depends on your truck and trailer. generally, I don't scale unless the load is over 40,000 lbs, espcially if I have a shipper who is loading in a way I don't like. I only marginally trust my dash guage.

 

Like KaBar I scale it at 30k. If the load is in 20 to 30k range it would depend how its loaded. Its also a good idea to scale your truck with full tanks and a mt trailer. That way you know how much freight you can put on.

 

I don't have an on-board device, so I simply use the ol' "Hmmmm...not sure about this one" technique.

After a dozen years, I know I can eyeball a good majority of the loads I get as I go to a lot of the same places. However, if there is any doubt, I scale it (and almost always if the bills say 44K or more).

I remember a load about seven or eight years ago. I picked up the preloaded trailer, and the bills just said "merchandise" (it was going from a distribution center to a single store, a small home-improvement chain). Bills said 40,000 pounds.

I left out and had to cross a rather bumpy railroad track leaving the place. Man, did it bounce. Easy decision for me, so I scaled it. I figured I"d have to go back and the load was unbalanced.

Total gross weight: 48K and change. The load was about 16,000. But it was all in the nose (so at least I got THAT part right!). I was legal, but that was the roughest riding load I'd had up to that point. But if I hadn't scaled it, I would have been far less relaxed.

 

I have onboard scales on tractor and trailer and they are very accurate if used properly. The truck and trailer must be on level ground! Then load and check weight, Mine is just a needle width below 60 on the drives (34,000) and no more than 70 on the trailer(40,000/10 FOOT SPREAD) It is almost impossible to overload my steers even with my fifth wheel all the way forward unless I'm over 84,000.

The best rule is...When in doubt, Weigh it!