Here's a doozie for ya. I sit in Columbus for a day before they decide to deadhead me 500 some miles to a CostCo DC in NJ. So i get there, BEEP....got a preplan for a load that picks up in 4 hours, turns out the trailer is ready, so i hook up to it. I am instructed by company employees working a little 'dispatch' office at the DC, "...to scale the load in back behind the warehouse...". So i do, takes me a few minutes to get legal, but its legal. I now drive 200 miles to the cosignee, and when i get within 5 minutes of the drop, BEEP....preplanned T-call at a drop yard 60 miles away.

I was running split sleeper to get to the DC as soon as i possibly could, and be safe. So ive got 2 hours before i run out of time. Knowing full well once i got to the drop, they'd probably just put the load back on me to redeliver it. I thought about just staying in the area, and tell them i'd keep the load on me and deliver it in the morning. BUT being the good employee i want to be, i tell them that it will be close, depending on traffic (this was just after afternoon rush hour near Washington DC). I look up where to scale the load, because we cannot T-Call the load over 35,000lbs without a certified scale ticket. So i see there is a truck stop 10 miles south of the drop yard. I head there, with an hour to spare on my clock...only to find out that the scale (which is clear in back) is broken, and that the truck stop, already full with no parking, had another 10 trucks driving around looking for a place to park, not to mention those trying get into fuel islands preventing any trucks from leaving cause of hte bottleneck. Takes me 20 minutes to get back out.

So i head to the drop yard, get to the drivers window and tell them the story, let them know i would have got it scaled but their scale was broke, and the next nearest scale was 30 miles away....i couldnt make it there and back before my clock ran out. Well the planner must have been having a bad day, because he wanted to play the 'i'm boss of you' card. And in a rather rude fashion asked me, "im curious why you didnt get the load scaled?". To that i said, "i did, at CostCo..." He cuts me off saying, "NOT GOOD ENOUGH." I then tell him that I'm not going to scale a load 5 minutes away from the shipper, pay $9, when i've already scaled it at the shipper and i know i'm legal. "Thats your job. So you'll keep the load, and you will deliver it tomorrow. You can ask your DM about this, and i am sure he will agree with me." To that, i just said "oh, you bet i will"...and set the phone down and turned away, as i mutter "@**hole" under my breath.

Well come to find out, that this load is now rescheduled for a delivery appointment time for the morning of the 17th. (this all happening the night of the 15th). I am willing to bet this is yet another of the planners 'i'm king of the hill' plays. So i'll be calling the drop here in a bit, and ask them if i can drop early....which they will say 'yes' since i already talked to the manager of the store yesterday evening.

BUT....the question is.....you are under a heavy load 44,000lbs+, you use the scale at the shipper, know you are legal, you even cross 3 weigh stations, pass every one....and under the assumption you're delivering the load, do you bother to get a '2nd opinion', and pay for a scale ticket?? I'm told i have to...and think that is wrong....

 

If the COSTCO scale is certified, I wouldn't worry about a second weigh. The Little Napoleans will get theire sooner or later. BOL

 

I think that if the company wants a scale ticket that's what they get.

 

Let me ask this.

You said there was another scale 30 miles away from the drop lot but you didn't have enough hours to get there and back. Is there some reason you could not have taken your break at the drop lot and then went and scaled out your load and came back to drop it, or if you had enough time to get there went and got the load scaled, took your break and returned to the lot?

Also ask yourself this. How would you feel about picking up a trailer with a 40,000 lb load with no scale ticket and have no idea how that trailer is loaded?

Personally that always ticked me off. More than once I have hooked up to a trailer with heavy loads and no scale tickets only to scale them out and find out I can't get legal with the way they are loaded. The company then has to spend a couple hundred dollars to have the trailer reloaded at some LTL company all because some driver did not do his/her job.


BTW: I never trust the scales at a shipper unless they are willing to guarantee in writing the weights. I have seen too many drivers slide their tandems on a shippers scale, plus who knows how long it has been since they had it calibrated.

Assuming I trusted the shippers scale and believed I was the one who was delivering it I wouldn't rescale, but if things changed and I had to drop the load I would do whatever possible to get is scaled on a certified scale out of professional courtesy if nothing else.

 

LOL.....wouldnt have expected that type of an answer. and yes, you are correct, after all they are the company. But my job is to haul freight, and as long as i'm legal, it shouldnt be a problem. They only wanted the scale ticket because i was t-calling the load. When i woke up this morning, I found that the load had been rescheduled for a 730a delivery tomorrow. Sorry, but if i'm delivering the load, and i'm legal, and since i'm no longer t-calling the load and hence no longer need the scale ticket, i wasnt going to get one.

They changed their game plan, and had me get it scaled 30 miles away, and t-call the load anyway. But what i am asking, is if you would get a scale ticket, after knowing the load was legal, and you were delivering it....forget the t-call, just asking in general.


oh and THEN when i get back to the drop yard, Captian America stops me in the fuel island, and does a vehicle inspection. Doesn't find a thing wrong with my truck, but writes up 4-5 things on the trailer. Then asks me, "...you have a problem with your 7-way box?" I said, whats a 7-way box?? you mean my pigtail??? He said he saw packing tape around the flap and connector. I told him that i always do that whenever that little flap dont secure the pigtail, just as a precaution it dont come loose when rolling down the road. He tells me 'you shouldn't do that'. And i told him 'yeah you should, to be on the side of safety'. He tells me that the pigtail should be tight enough, the prongs should be tight fitting enough to prevent it from slipping out. if its slipping out, then i've got a problem with the prongs in the trailer, or the prongs in the pigtail. I just shook my head in agreement just to move along....not having the energy to argue anymore.

what is it about people east of the 80th parallel...is it something in the water???

 

Well he does have a point, if my pig tail is loose then I just spread the prongs out a little. Not much chance of the pig tail coming out if it fits in snug and you have enough slack in the cord for turning tight corners.

 

Both valid questions. I ended up taking a 10 hr break, and then went to scale it. Again, getting a scale ticket isnt the issue, it was not having the time to get it AND get to the drop yard by the time they set the 'deadline'. (not to mention how many times have you been assigned a t-call load, and you end up sitting waiting 10+ hours past the time it was due in the yard, all because the driver wasn't a hard driver?) and then the flyin' J's scale being broke. Had CostCo not had a scale, i would have scaled the load at the nearest truck stop. anything over 30,000 i scale, whether on site or at a truck stop.

The thing was, that when i got the t-call load, they gave me a deadline of one hour. I told em i couldnt make it to the drop yard in an hour. when asked when i could, i said within 2 hours, but it would be close. They will not accept a t-call load over 35,000lbs without a scale ticket. So your latter question of 'how would i feel...'....would never happen. And even when they do have scale tickets, and the yard has a scale....i re-scale it. Cause unless the driver dropping off the load tells me where s/he had their 5th wheel slid to, and how full their tanks were, the drives and steer weights could be off.

 

i think you will side with whoever it is who has a different opinion than me, just out of spite.

So tell me, you spread your prongs in your trailer, making your pigtail ever so slightly looser and looser, till it isnt snug. Why not just take 10 cents worth of tape, and tape the flap down over the catch notch on the pigtail?

I actually had my pigtail come loose on me on the way to the drop yard. As i took the exit for I-81 south, i pulled off, and took out some tape, and taped it. (had i done this before when i knew i should have taped it at the shipper, it wouldnt have come off) So at night, cars flyin' by, one just dont happen to be paying attention, and sideswipes your truck/trailer, and worse off....you end up in a wheelchair for the rest of your life....or maybe dead. why? all because you didnt want to spend ten cents in tape.

oh...not to mention you just had a preventable accident put on your DAC report.

 

Here's my two cents:

If I ever believed for an instant...that the load I was hooking in a box was in excess of 30,000 pounds....it went to the first scale I could put it on that was certified and provided a printout. I axle'd it and got it rescaled so that I had a printout of the legal setup.

I did not trust "shippers scales"....unless they had a recent certification certificate issued by the state and was showing recert/recal dates.

I once went to a brewery in OH....just north of Cinci....they weighed us in and they were going to load us to the max...right at 80K gross outbound. They (security) informed me that they were going to load me with 47,500 in beer. Dunnage etc, was not included. I asked what their scale said I weighed, they responded: We don't have to tell you! I dropped my CAT scale ticket on the counter and said: Cut the load to 46,000. Well, we ended up with quite a pissing contest, and the dumbass security guard found out that God had not died and left her in charge, and as a result....the brewery had to cut all the loads by about 1500 pounds....or face fines. I had no problem advising the brewery management that I would inform the OH DOT that they were "forcing" illegal loads onto OH roads.....I guess they didn't want to see DOT with portables outside their gate. Hmmmm, maybe thats why I never got sent back there.....

Nor would they give me a printout of the weights.

I always scaled before going to pickup certain loads, and I scaled them asap after loading. I wasn't taking any chances. I have had a couple of occasions where I was going down backroads where I was legal to go and encountered DOT with portables.... and rather than get caught up in an issue....I always had a scale ticket for the load.

As to securing a pigtail...well, whatever needs to be done needs to be done. I've picked up trailers and had to spread the pins...and I've also had to squeeze in the contacts on my end. I've picked up trailers where the spring on the raincover was broken and in those cases I would usually put a zip tie on them to secure them..... Better safe than sorry.

 

Whatever, you are the one who can't seem to take any advise from others. I find it hard to believe that you will spread out the female part on the pig tail by spreading out the prongs on the 7 way box, but I didn't say you did anything wrong, just saying that doing it some other way would look a little less Jerry rigged and maybe just maybe not draw unwarrented attention. But glad to see you made the jump from a loose pig tail all the way to ending up in a wheel chair......