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Trucker's Journal

I've been a trucker since November, 2004. Before that I was an accountant for many years. I'm having fun and actually making more than I did before. Go figure....

Name:
Location: Midwest, United States

Saturday, April 21, 2007

More on weight

It's funny how things work. I can go for weeks and never have a bad weight, either total or on axles, then get a couple in a row. Last week I had a load assigned to me which had been loaded by a new employee who thought the object was to stack things as high as possible and pack it all in the front of the trailer. BZZZT! Wrong!

This trailer gave me steer axle weight of 13,880 (legal limit 12,000) and 28,160 on the trailer tandems with them moved ALL the way to the front to redistribute weight to the back. The balance of the 76,720 total was on the drive axles. With no way to move anything (even the sliding fifth wheel) to get it legal, the only option was to unload and have an experienced loader do it correctly. After it was done, my weights were: steer-10,580, drives-30,680, and tandems-35,460. But, remember, I had them slid all the way front, so I could adjust them back. At about 400 pounds per adjustment hole, I needed to move about 9 as a starting estimate. With that trailer, that was about 3 feet, so I slid them and ran over the scale again. Voila! Now, steers-10,620, drives-33,940, and tandems-32,160. You'll notice that moving the tandems does affect the steer axle very slightly, but it's very noticable on the drives and tandems.

I did get a load on Friday where I was overweight totally and they had to take off some of the load. I didn't get axles weights but do have an air gauge on my dash showing what my drive air bags have, and they were probably overweight, but I knew I wasn't going far (couple hundred miles) and there were no scales between start and stop, so I just didn't worry about it. Yeah, I could have been stopped on the road for something and been weighed on portable scales, but that's a rare event, so no sleep lost.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Trucker Dude...you should publish an ebook with your tips on weight.
Good stuff!
Jim

5:51 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I know of a dear 23 yr old woman with two babies who works very very hard in this tuff world, who was just given aids by a con man who waited until after she became ill to tell her . He controls her via threats to her babies. She has been an Honor student, while he a con man arrested 4 times. He is a cocain addict. No one knew this at all untill after his dates turned into an insidious move in. He is commiting outright murder. The children are in danger. I have gone to the police the Protective services and churchs. Is there anyone who will take this animal out west to the desert and let him find god ????? He has no money except for what he forces away from her. In desparate need of American Truckers who will protect the innocent in america, not just wars in other countries. Are there any heros here ? Michigan and running out of time.

12:19 AM  

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