Blowing by the scales

[toycarparkinglot]

About five years ago I was still a greenhorn driver. I was team driving at the time and had just taken the wheel for the day, with my codriver still in the right seat. We were heading north on US41 in Illinois coming up on the Wisconsin line. Anyways....about 2 miles before the WI line, there's a scalehouse. Its the type of scale you turn off the road into and follow a sort of horseshoe path through. As we came up on it, the Open/Closed sign was completely off, not showing anything. We slowed down, noticed that there seemed to be no signs of life in the place, and drove on by. About a mile down there is (or was) a sign showing you could turn left and enter the southbound scale. The southbound side was definitely open, so we figured we should pull into that one. Never got the chance. We were pulled over, asked why we blew the scale, and were told to follow him back to the scale.....after he confiscated our logbooks of course. We then came face to face with the biggest a**hole in law enforcement I have ever met to this day. We apologized about driving by the scale and explained the situation. Dumb greenhorn mistake, but an honest one. He then went through our logbooks, instantly turning into Mr. Hyde. He criticized every entry, started cursing at us, and threw the logs across the room more times than I could count. Apparently, the way we logged a 34 hr restart days earlier in NC sent him over the cliff. We disagreed, but there was no arguing with this guy Later on we found out that there was actually NOTHING wrong with the way we logged. We even calculated that trip using the older method without the restart provision, and found that we weren't over hours anyways. He fined me for Log Falsification, and put us OOS for 10 hours. My codriver was out of hours and I had only driven 15 minutes. So watch yourselves going by that one. It can also be an easy scale to just go right by if you're not paying attention.

[danske]

Last year I was driving northbound on US81 near Hebron, NE. The scale is south of town in the middle of the highway with a looping lane around their one scale on the southbound side. Driving pass the sign there was a maintenance truck with 2 men on the tailgate fixing the sign. I figured the scale was closed so I kept going. I did see couple trucks in the scale, but thought they were just southbound trucks.

A couple miles from the scale I get stopped by the weighmaster. He asked me why I didn't stop and I stated because they were fixing the sign. He has me follow him back to the scale where I park it and go inside. He is on the phone with NDOR asking if there was a road crew working on the sign. Apparently their maintenance crew don't inform the scale when they stop to work on the sign(I think they were changing light bulbs).

Just before letting me go another officer who was looking my paperwork over while other was on the phone say "I don't have time to give you written warning". Of course, never is a good time to express my thoughts a LEO or weighmaster, so I quietly left.

I suppose it would have save time and effort if I had just stop; now it is just another story from the road.

[VPIDarkAngel]

A couple weeks ago I was on a four stop run. It originated in South Boston, VA with stops in Petersburg, Portsmouth, Virginia Beach, and Chesapeake, before returning to South Boston. I had just picked up a trainee and I was showing him how things worked on the DG account. I was debating on whether to run US360 to US460 or US58 to I-85 to get there. Since there was a scale on I-85, I went to the Shell and got the truck weighed... 420lbs. overweight on the trailer. 360/460 it was. After we finished our first stop at Petersburg (unloading about 4,000lbs. of freight), we headed for Portsmouth. After getting around the Suffolk bypass on US-58, I realized something... there was a scale in front of us! I thought to myself, "Crap, they're gonna bust our butts for being overweight." I contemplating getting 'stuck' out in the middle lane to get around the scale but Ronny kept asking "Didn't we just take off some weight?" I thought that he was referring to getting the trailer re-worked at the distribution center, but it finally dawned on me about 100 feet before the exit ramp that he meant our first stop. By the time my brain processed this, I had already dropped several gears and was in the deceleration lane.
So far, that's the closest I've come to 'blowing by the scales' outside of that one near the I-95/I-495 split on the north end of Washington, DC.

[Fredog]

a few years ago, I was bob-tailing in Minnesota and I went by the scale, the guy chased me down and had me go back to the scale where he did a full inspection, he found nothing wrong and told me that he wasnt going to give me a ticket because I had a good attitude and he believed it was an honest mistake.
I trucked for 20 + years in Florida nd they never made us go in when bob-tailing

[Fredog]

About five years ago I was still a greenhorn driver. I was team driving at the time and had just taken the wheel for the day, with my codriver still in the right seat. We were heading north on US41 in Illinois coming up on the Wisconsin line. Anyways....about 2 miles before the WI line, there's a scalehouse. Its the type of scale you turn off the road into and follow a sort of horseshoe path through. As we came up on it, the Open/Closed sign was completely off, not showing anything. We slowed down, noticed that there seemed to be no signs of life in the place, and drove on by. About a mile down there is (or was) a sign showing you could turn left and enter the southbound scale. The southbound side was definitely open, so we figured we should pull into that one. Never got the chance. We were pulled over, asked why we blew the scale, and were told to follow him back to the scale.....after he confiscated our logbooks of course. We then came face to face with the biggest a**hole in law enforcement I have ever met to this day. We apologized about driving by the scale and explained the situation. Dumb greenhorn mistake, but an honest one. He then went through our logbooks, instantly turning into Mr. Hyde. He criticized every entry, started cursing at us, and threw the logs across the room more times than I could count. Apparently, the way we logged a 34 hr restart days earlier in NC sent him over the cliff. We disagreed, but there was no arguing with this guy Later on we found out that there was actually NOTHING wrong with the way we logged. We even calculated that trip using the older method without the restart provision, and found that we weren't over hours anyways. He fined me for Log Falsification, and put us OOS for 10 hours. My codriver was out of hours and I had only driven 15 minutes. So watch yourselves going by that one. It can also be an easy scale to just go right by if you're not paying attention.

who went and got the logs after he threw them?
how could your co-driver be out of hours if you did a legal 34 hour restart?
who verified later that you were right and he was wrong?
how much was the fine and did you have to pay it?

[Windwalker]

Some years ago, (10+) they had construction at the line between MN and SD. They had a lane marked with cones for trucks to go into the scale, but by the time I saw the "OPEN" sign, I could not get into the scale lane. No one did anything. But, it sure made me look much closer and be prepared to go in ever since. About that same time, my sister-in-law got a fine for the same thing in IL for $160, plus a fine on her log book.

And, back when we were driving team, my wife was trying to get a license number for a car with a drunk driver and blew the scale coming into FL on I-10. She stopped at the "get back on ramp" when she realized it, and the scalemaster was there as soon as she set the brake. After she told him why, and gave him a description of the car, with an LA plate, he simply told her "NEXT TIME, YOU STOP IN AT MY SCALE", and let her go. For as long as she drove, she never did that again.