Getting hauled across the scales...
#1
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Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: MS
Posts: 4
Years ago it was a fairly common practice to overload boxed fruit out of FL going north.
There was a "metal" casket company in Atlanta running little 3000 cabover Whites and 32' furniture vans hauling caskets out of Atlanta to near NY points. Deadhead back home. (VA did not honor a tandem trailer at the time.) Drivers picked up side money at truckstops on each side of the VA scales by hauling your overload across to the truck stop the other side; set it back on, and you are on your way to deliver. One night a driver coming south picked up a haul, carried it across; switched it back, and was approached to run some northbound. So he gets a thing going and winds up switching out 12 crossings that night. On his last one north he is told to pull around and come in. Scale man asks: "How many of them little trucks does your company have"? Driver is at loss, but says "I really don' know , all of them are not in at the time I'm home". Scale says well, but be a lot of them. "There are 12 of them ahead of you tonight".
#4
Back then this industry wasn't looked at as a revenue source so much. Today, states look at trucks with dollar signs in their eyes. I think that there was more live and let live. As long as you didn't get too much out of line they didn't bother us much. Fines were more reasonable. It seemed that back then if I did get a ticket it was usually about $25. That gave the state a little money and didn't kill us too much. I am talking more about the 1960's and 1970's. I don't recall them really cracking down on the industry much until about 10 years or so ago. |

