Got 2nd Over weight ticket this year...ouch $$$$
 

Picked up a shag at Pepsi in Omaha ,NE going to Grand Island , NE I weighed the load about 9 miles from pick up in route at the Sapp Bros at EXit 440 I-80 in Omaha ...it scaled at roughly


12,100
35,250
32,650

Obviously I needed to slide the tandems forward atleast 5 holes at 250lbs per hole to shift the minumim of 1250 to be axle legal ...so upon inspection of my tandems I noted I only had 5 holes of adjustment left ,and slid the tandems up those 5 holes ,and on down the road I went...UNTIL I hit the scales at MM 415 I-80 comming into Lincoln , Where the DOT had me scaled at roughly

11, 500
31,800
35,950


Well obviously I'm over on the trailer ,and it's over the 5% they allow you to be and still let you correct it without a ticket if able make legaL , So I made my donation to the state of Nebrask in the Amount of $120.00 .


What Pi$$ed me off is I showed the officer my scale ticket from sapp bros and told him I slid the tandems forward 5 holes to correct the axle weight , and he said those scale receipts don't matter ....? what kills me is that had I not weighed the load my axle weights would have been off but within in the 5% rule allowed for correction without fine .

Not sure what kind of trailer you pull, but I was taught.... and always figured 400 per hole on a trailer, 250 on a double pronged 5th wheel.

Sounds like the type of mess those knuckleheads at Wolfe Trucking in Van Nuys, CA liked to pull.
Pick up a purposely overloaded bottled water load from Poland, ME and take it down into Long Island.

Mom'n'Pops.

It always depends on the spacing of the holes.

Our trailers like most trailers only move about 250lbs per hole my tractor like most tractors move about 500lbs per slot on the 5th wheel ...Some are different ,and it just depends on the gap between slots on the 5th wheel or trailer as to how much weight gets moved per slot , but the trailer I had was the standard 250lb per hole , and according to the scale ticket i got at sapp bros i should have been legal after sliding the tandems 5 holes forward , but obviously that ticket was not correct , and therefore my adjustments were not either .

The scale may have been correct, but your assessment of how much weight got adjusted per hole wasn't. I am with Hobo, we have trailers where it only adjusts about 250 and others where it is about 400. Always reweigh when it is so close.

And I have NEVER had a truck where it was more than 250 a hole on the 5th wheel.

I've picked up trailers where the holes for the tandems are about a foot apart, and then you have your normal spacing of about 4-5 in. But what i dont understand is how you're mad at the NE DOT for giving you the ticket? You knew you were overweight the first time, adjusted the tandems, but didn't rescale the load. HAD YOU DONE THAT, you'd have seen you slid them too far, and then could have adjusted. Not spending the $1 to reweigh ended up costing you $120.

also something i do, is i take a piece of chalk, mark the original hole i'm in, just to be sure i know where i'm adjusting from. I've on occasion forgot the chalk, and end up thinking i slid the tandems 3-4 holes, when i really slid them 7 or 8. (granted in your case you only had 5 holes to work with anyway). Something else i've got, one of those 'stoppers' i picked up from a Swift reefer trailer when i was on my mentor's truck. stick it in the hole in front of the hole you want to stop at, and its error free.) best 5 finger discount i've ever invested in. =)

"250 lbs." "400 lbs." per hole. There is NO formula. By your numbers, you shifted 660 lbs. per hole.

It depends on how the weight is distributed inside the trailer. If you slide a tandem under an empty trailer, you'll get so many lbs. per hole. Slide the tandem--same trailer--under 46,000 lbs and you'll get different numbers. Concentrate 45,000 lbs. into the first 35 feet of a 53 (hello, Budweiser!) -- you'll never legal it.

And, erm, you didn't reweigh after you slid the tandem?

I've gotta agree with Kev on this one, $1 to save the fine seems like a good deal to me. No sense in assuming that a 5 hole adjustment made it correct, too easy to confirm with a re-weigh. Those scales are not certified on axle weights anyhow only on gross, so you only get a general idea anyway.

Dammit Boy!! Sometimes Kev just pops off at the right time, with the right idea and information!! Bless his heart! :lol:

Yup Big J....you hosed yerself to the tune of $120. But...the state of Nebraska thanks you greatly ....... I am sure!!

Does Sapp Bros. use "CAT" or "Interstate" scales?? I do not trust "Interstate" scales.

Finally, somebody gets it right... thank you! Yes, you can make a generalization about 250lbs or 400lbs per hole, and that is enough MUCH of the time, but NOT always. It all depends on how the load is loaded. What if it just happens that 10k of the weight is concentrated right over the tandems? One hole will have a much larger effect than if there is only 2k lbs in that same spot. Of course the spacing of the holes also plays a big part. And while I don’t scale a load that I know is under 42k lbs (I’m pretty good at using my tractor air bag pressure gauge), I would have definitely have paid the extra couple of bucks to re-weigh the load and save the $120 overweight ticket.

Thank ya, Musicman! :D I agree 100% with everything you said!

Nope it seems most on here don't get it...you can load the trailer any way you want that only determines where the weight is distributed if it will be legal or can be made legal ...for example if you scale a load that weighs like this


12000
35000
33000


it don't matter how it's stacked staggered or what not inside this is the weight on your axles ,and when you slide your tandems it moves the fulcrum a given number of inches per hole the bigger the distance between holes the more weight moved per hole , so with the axle weights i just listed above with a typical trailer 4 holes moves about 1000lbs everytime ,and it don't matter how it's loaded you will move 1000lbs as you will move 250lbs per hole between trailer and drives...Man it seems 99% that responded ...DO NOT ...know how a fulcrum works and therfore don't understand what happend when sliding a tabdem or the fifth wheel , and have an idea that some magic is involved ...LOL so if you're moving more than roughly 250lbs per hole you're trailer will have very large gaps between the slots unlike most trailers ...My truck/trailer is at the T?A in Wheatridge ,Colorado if any of you are in the area I'll gladly prove you I"M right and the other side of the fence is dense in the skull .


As for the reweigh saving me a ticket the sapp bross has a certified scale I should not need a reweigh after weighing and observing where my weights were , but even if I did why would this have saved me a ticket since the scale was notcorrect the first time why would it decide to start accurately weighing the second ?


And I could not move 2 many holes forward the trailer only had 5 holes left for forward slide , so 1250lbs is all I could move ...pretty much fool proof ...unless you're weighing on a POS scale , But that 1250 based on the weights given by sapp bros scale would have been legal .


I guess my point is you can still get a weight ticket even if you weigh your load if the scale you weigh it on is ...FU@#ED .

On a side not I had a driver at current company tell me he had a drive weight of 36,000lbs and he slide the tandems all the way up and on his re-weigh it still weighed 36,00 lbs...BULL SH#T ...I've had loads that were heavy and only loaded in the first half of the trailer , and while it could not be made to axle out legal it still moved the 250lbs per hole for the given number of holes I slid it ...And Like I said Im willing to meet you when you roll through the Denver area to prove ..ME RIGHT ...LOL ...I'll pay for the scale tickets , but if I'm right ,And you are arguing that I'm wrong you will owe me the scale money back ,because you argued out of ignorance .

I'll take any one comming through Denver in the next 4 days with a load ,and pay for you to weigh it then you can move it as mony holes as you want and I guarantee every time I can accurately give the weights you get on your reweigh just with simple math based on the what weight gets moved per hole ...Come on "experts" put your money where your mouth is...WINK

NO ***** ...This proves your point ...HOW ? obviously if you have more weight on an axle than you have adjustment for you are not going to get it legal , But you will still observe about 250 lbs of weight shift on the axles per hole you slide it for the adjustment you do have ....More if you have the trailers with big gap slots I've never pulled any of those in 4 years , so If I got one I would have to reweigh it to see how much it was doing per hole ,but only once .


And my adjustments were based on the weights the scale popped out , which consisted of 5 holes forward...the only 5 holes left to move forward , so it was not possibe to over slide the trailer ...After my ticket I stopped in YORK , NE and reweighed load to see what it weighed on a cat scale and I got exactly what the DOT scale showed , and then I adjusted it based on my 250lbs per hole and reweighed it just for giggles and my 250lbs per hole put me legal moving exactly what you can expect to move with 5 holes....Conclusion SAPP bROS scale was not correct , SO it would not matter if I weighed it 100X the scale is in need of calibration ,and will be off every weigh not just the first...WINK .

Very amazing that you tell everyone else that they are wrong yet you yourself are the one that came out wrong in the end. Saying you dont need a re-weigh because you understand fulcrums and know exactly where your weight went after you slid is one of the absolute most asinine things i have ever read on here. You have topped Kevin's tales in many ways on this one. And yes,for once Kevin is spot on in what he is saying in this one.
I am just completely dumbfounded by your reply to everyone on this. And the fact that you say this is your second one in a year makes it even more laughable that you tell everyone else they dont know how it works and that only you have it figured out and know how it works.

Them Nebraska boys were probably laughing their hides off when you finally left. They got you overweight, your produce a certified scale ticket that shows your overweight and try to tell them your all good.........that's friggin funny right there. If you had checked your weight at least once more, you'd be $118-119 richer. You would have found you had made an error in your sliding. No matter who's right or wrong in how the weight changes when sliding everything, you still should always re-weigh no matter how good you believe you are at doing it unless of course your a SuperTrucker.

Again... spacing of the holes...

Okay...actually what does a fulcrum have to do with sliding the tandems?? A fulcrum is a support about which a lever turns.....there is nothing 'turning' on tandems (aside from the wheels). So understanding what a fulcrum is, Ethan Hunt, really dont matter when sliding tandems. And he actually wouldn't be $119 'richer', he'd be $1 moore poor since thats what he should have spent to re-weigh the rig. getting a ticket, puts you in a hole.

Seriously - whoever told you that trailer tandems are 250 lbs per hole was smoking a fat doobie. 400 - 600 per hole, depending on how the weight is laid out in the trailer. The scale wasn't wrong - you were.

Besides, even if the scale WAS wrong, reweighing it would have shown how much weight you moved, plus it would have given you the ammunition you needed to fight the citation. But you didn't even bother to do that, making yourself extra wrong.

Whoa, Big Jeep.

After two overweight tickets isn’t it time to rethink your expensive method? Forget “250 lbs. per hole” and overthinking fulcrums. Scale each load as it is not as you think it should be. Then (maybe) you won’t get a third overweight ticket.

Again, there is no "standard" 250 lbs. per hole when you haul different loads. Dude, you really need to learn this stuff.

Kev, he had to pay $120 in fines, had he spent that extra $1, he wouldn't have had to pay that $120 fine, so he would have $119 still in his pocket, hence richer than he currently is.

keywords there 'than he currently is'. =)

I guess that time that the shipper had me 6000 lbs over on my drives, and I slid my tandems up all the way (12 holes) and it took a whopping 300 lbs off my drives, the load must not have understood these magic fulcrums.

SOMEONE doesnt get it, but it's not us

No. A fulcrum is the pivot on which a lever MOVES which is Entirely different and has everything to do with shifting weight. The tandems do not move as the fulcrum is stationary. you move the weight by moving the lever which is the trailer. Look at it this way. When you "shift your tandems" to legal a load your tandems or the pivot stays in the same place (if your brakes work) what you are actualy moving back and forth is the trailer over it.
You are correct on the $1. Why someone would go to the bother of weighing a load then not spend a buck on a re-weigh after shifting dosnt make any sense to me.

Rather than use any fixed amount of weight moved per hole, do what my trainer taught me: use *roughly* 1% of the cargo weight per hole.

Thus, 40,000 lbs cargo is roughly 400 lbs per hole.

30,000 lbs cargo is roughly 300 lbs per hole.

Obviously, some loads are very nose (or tail) heavy, or you might have a trailer with tandem holes spaced closer together. On those, think of three of the narrower holes as two of the "big" ones and you'll be very close to where you need to be.

Rescaling close ones never hurts either, lol.

Jim

so in my 3 yrs of architecture, i didn't learn anything.......thank you for setting me straight. <eyes roll>

no matter how i discuss this, you'll think i'm wrong...but that is okay.

Well, it was YOUR math (and the not doing a reweigh) that cost YOU the ticket, so...

After reading this last night I decided to see how close I could balance my load. I knew I was legal by looking at my pressure gauge and my Rite Weigh on the trailer.

I invested $11 for the sake of arguement

When I went across the scales the first time I had 30,190lbs on the drives and 32,960lbs on the tandems.

I moved the tandems back 1 hole and reweighed and it moved 362lbs to the drives. So I moved the tandems back 4 more holes and the 362lbs per hole stayed pretty consistant when I reweighed again.

My trailer is a 2007 Vanguard 53' dry van

JR OTR had a pretty good hypothysis. Think i will try this sometime, one with a 30k load and doing what you did Scott, spend $11 and weigh 3 times, then do the same thing with a 45k load.

Dude, you were RIGHT ON with your first post.

Ever hear the expression - "QUIT WHILE YOU'RE AHEAD"?

sigh - one step forward - two steps BACK...

Rick

How will you have any time to do this? Won't you be behind schedule because of all the time you wasted aligning the trailers so they're all straight at the drop lot?



p.s: nice try on the sig line, but it just makes you look foolish and defintely unfunny. Seems more like a personal attack then quoting something someone said.

I'll not get into discussions about fulcrums and levers and such. All I can say is that I might not be qualified as an "old hand" just yet, but in 12 years and close to two million miles on the road, I have never gotten on overweight ticket I did not intend to get. I can also say that in my experience pulling all manner of reefers, boxes, enclosed auto transports, and a few tanks and flats in those 12 years, I have found that there is no absolute when it comes to how much weight is transferred from one set of axles to another by moving the trailer axles one hole. It usually ends up being between 250 and 400 lbs, but it has been less at times and more on a few other occasions.

I have never weighed at a Sapp Brothers scale, so I have no way to comment on their reliability; but I do know that if you’d have had a CAT scale ticket that shows you are legal, the boys at the NE scale would have had to think twice about writing you a ticket in the first place, and if the CAT scale turned out to be inaccurate, you’d not have had to pay the fine… CAT would have done so for you. I also know that if I was THAT close to being over axle weight, I’d have shifted 1000 lbs to my steers. In fact, I keep my steers loaded to about 12,500 lbs all the time, in part to make it a little easier to get a heavy load legal and in part to keep my trailer a little closer to the tractor in an effort to improve fuel economy.

Perhaps your experiences have been more extensive or different from mine. If so, and if you are happy with the results you are yielding by doing things the way you have been, then stick with it. I know I am happy with the results yielded by my way of doing things and thus will not change.

CAT scale only certifies the gross weight, they would not have done anything for being over on the axle weight.

I might not be an expert on that since it's never been an issue with me. If you say so, I can't disagree.

Put your money where your mouth is ... I weighed every load I 've ever had except 1 and that 1 cost me some cash , But during my first year of driving I weighed every load and reweighed every load ,and there was no magic any of those times it was simple if if I moved the tandems I moved 250lbs for every hole I slid them . If you're moving 400-600 lbs per hole you have an odd trailer not like one used at Werner or most big companies as youbwould only have a few holes of adjustment that move big numbers per hole unlike the trailers that have around 20+ holes and allow a finer tuned adjustment .


Now After I got my ticket from the DOT I stopped by the PETRO in York Nebraska and Reweighed it on a Cat scale ,and came up with the numbers the DOT had on their scale , And Decided to get it axle legal eventhough I was not going to cross another scale , and as usual after sliding my tandems a few holes based on the typical 250lbs per hole I reweighed and was legal ....SO YES IT WAS THE SCALE AT SAPP BROS THAT WAS OFF ,And it cost me $120.00 .


Now Like I said I'll gladly meet you to prove you wrong ...I like doing that with people in this industry .

My first overweight was due to not weighing the load ,and I was overgross at 84,500lbs this was not a error in sliding tandems it was simply me being lazy and never weighing the load , And yes on the typical trailer you will move 250lbs per hole when you slide the tandems ...like I said I'll gladly prove this day in and day out on my home time if anyone on here who knows better is in the Denver area ...Wink ...I think you might need to do some learning , And like I said anyone on here passing through Denver who wants it proved to them that the typical trailer shifts 250lbs per hole when slid I'll gladly meet you at any truck stop in the Denver area , and I will pay for every scale ticket , and you will owe me a public description on CAD of what took place on the scale when weighed and re-weighed ...Or do we want to just keep it on CAD where you can't be proved wrong ?

No way to say what would have been the outcome since the scale was not correct , As I stated I reweighed the load on a cat scale in York,NE after getting my ticket ,and readjusted it about 8 holes...2000lbs and RE-Weighed it and was good to go as expected ...Like I said the scale at sapp bros was off , And since it was off no weights obtained from it can be used as measurement to adjust the load be it 1st weigh 2nd ,3rd ...and so on .

Yep it will be consistant per hole , and the weight moved per hole depends on the space between the holes the bigger the space the more the weight moved per hole ...the trailer I had on the pepsi load is just like the wabash trailers at Werner and is about 250lbs per hole ...your trailer has larger gaps between holes than the wabash I had so it is more per hole than 250 . What the peanut gallery is failing to read is that i reweighed this load after getting a ticket and readjusted the load based at ...250lbs...per hole and was good 2 go , and that the weights given to me by the sapp brois scale was just wrong , and since the scale was wrong even a re-weigh would be wrong on that scale .