When do you scale?

If you live load it.. and its light stuff.. don't worry about it. If you load it and its heavy.. scale it .. if you did NOT load it SCALE IT! no matter how light it is. I picked up a load of "plastic vacuum cleaner parts" in El Paso once.. slid the tandems forward (waited all day for the load from Mexico) and headed east.. it felt horrible.. Stopped at the first truck stop (30 miles away from the shipper) and it was 10,500 on the steers, 15,500 on the drives and 40,600 on the tandems.. Even slid all the way back I couldn't get the weight off.. so back to the shipper I went.. There WAS 15000# of plastic on the trailer (matched the BOL) then there was 16 pallets of double stacked electric motors in the rear. I have a feeling that either they were just never manifested and someone would have gotten free stuff.. or that they were trying to send them for free... Had the loaded the motors in the middle, I would have never known it..

 

I work for an owner operator and he his cheap. In the passed 3 months I been using the scale to check my weight because some companies does not tell you the weight on the bol. So far all of the time I have to adjust my tandem axels to balance the weight. He got pull over once time and go a ticket for been only 40 lbs overweight on the drive.

I don't understand why the truck companies does not charge the scale fees to the shipper. I told my boss look so far I been guessing that the truck is overweight somewhere at 100% so why if it only cost 12$ and that can be claimed as a business expense it is not better than not going to a scale and getting a big fat ticket?

 

In the case of O/O, he should reimburse the driver the scale ticket amount and then it is a 100% write off for a business expense.
If he is that worried about $12, maybe you should worry about when your next check bounces.

 

When it come to paid I always get my paycheck in time.

 

Don’t worry about it, they will weigh you at the first chicken coop on your route and tell you what you weigh. Lol

Never mind, don’t do that. Their fees are much higher at the coop than they are at Cat.

 

This is true. I'm going to talk to my accountant and check if as a company driver I csn claim this fees (scale) as unpaid working expenses and get the tax credit my self

 

If you are a company driver you CANNOT claim any unpaid working expenses as a deduction. That and the $65 M&EI deduction went away a few years ago for non O/O.

 

The only way a company driver can claim anything is if he exceeds that standard irs allowance.

Could be different these days. I don't know what the allowance is yet. But it's higher then what anyone will ever spend for their job for the year.

 

$12,400 is this year allowance.

Do you plan on spending $12,400 for work expenses?