When do you scale?

My company is death on "citations!" They reimburse us for scale tickets, so it's easy.

Weigh every load.

That way you know. And if that stupid coup in north MS tries to scam you out of $50 you know where your axle weights are at.

Besides... if you're going to max out your fuel mileage, you need to balance the weight between the drives and tandems.

 

True oh so true

 

Imaging this.... You don't scale your load. You roll across the scale 500-600 miles from loading point. Then you hear.... "Driver. Pull over to the side & bring your paperwork in."

You do so... Then you hear "Driver. Let's see your scale ticket. My scale has you grossing 83K". You respond... "Ssssir, I don't have a scale ticket" "Didn't you scale that load driver?" "No sir.... Western told me it only weighed this much". "Driver, here is your $3000.00 ticket. You are also currently OOS until you get that weight down to 80K"

Don't Trust Western Express or any other company!

 

they prob tell all their drivers not to scale till the load is x amount because they dont want to be paying back however many drivers they have for ( what they think ) is a worthless weigh.
tho, most companies will pay u back on any load u weigh, western is prob just trying to save as many dollars as they can by makin them only weigh at x amount.. pure bs!
just consider urself illegal till u hit a cat.

 

For MOST loads. As I said MOST, not all. When I pull away from the dock, I set my tandems at about the California mark, unless it looks to be loaded heavy at the rear. Then when you weigh in, it usually takes very little if any adjustment from California. At least most times. The first thing I'm looking for is a scale at the nearest truck stop. I scale them all. The company reimburses us the 9 bucks, so what the hell. It eases my mind when I see the sign WEIGH STATION 1 MILE AHEAD, ALL TRUCKS MUST EXIT. Even though we have Pre-Pass, you will still bump the scales on the roadway, and YOU WILL get a red light on the Pre-Pass box and get pulled in to run across the scales.
So far I've had 2 loads where the bills said 18,000 or so and it even felt somewhat light on the pull but was actually much heavier, or the conehead loaded everything high and up front and my drives were over. Sometimes it turns out the load was much heavier that the secretary in recieving decided it was. Some shippers will even skimp and minimize the load weight, trying to pay less for the load. Some will over load trying to get every pennies worth out of one load.
Get you a truck stop guide, a cat scale location booklet, flying J certified scales booklet anything you can to locate any of them near you. Also check your road atlas, which usually gives the locations of the DOT Scales on your route. That way you can locate a scale before you have to cross a weigh station. Scale, Scale, Scale. Did I mention Scale?

 

Yes scale when in doubt but use common sense too. If the load is obviously light (Like around 20K) and you verified by feeling a pallet and it was indeed light as a feather. Save yourself the $9.

Because let's say your empty truck and trailer weigh 35,000.

After subtracting the 12K LB for the steers you have 11500LB on your drives and trailer tandems when empty. Even with the full 20K load on either axles(which is impossible) that would only be 31,500 LBS.

 

Scale? huh you mean I'm supposed to check my weight? I just weigh in when I arrive at my destination LOL

I pull a grain hopper and load on the farm most of the time using the gauges to try and get it right and works very well to get close most dot will let you by as long as it looks like you attempted to get it right

I cant belive how heavy van trailers are I weigh 26500 empty with a 379-119 w/sleeper

 

Well, I'm cheap and lazy so I don't scale unless the load is 35,000+lbs. But I've hauled enough heavy loads to tell by "feel" if the truck isn't riding quite right, and when I should pay the Cat it's fee. I don't reccommend this method to any new driver, as it takes time and experience to get it right. I've been doing this long enough, and pulled loads heavy enough often enough to develop a sense of when the truck is overweight on one set of axles. And so far, I've been scaled innumerable times but have yet to pay a scale ticket.

 

Say WHAT???????? Your signed BOLs are proof that you hauled the load, and actually delivered it.

When in doubt, scale. It is M U C H cheaper in the long run!