Because I haul a crane van, I weight in at close to 38,000 empty, so when I do back hauls (my usual loads usually don't weight more then 20,000), I always have to be extra careful because they will often try to squeeze 45,000+ on there and I can only legally haul about 42,000 at MAX. Also because of the crane I tend to be tandem heavy, so if I ever get a load more then 30,000 I scale it because I know the tandems will be over gross.
Last back haul I did, company had a scale. Loaded me up, I went across the scale the first time after being loaded (keep in mind I TOLD them they couldn't put more then 42k on there), the readout was: 11,500, 29,750, 44,560! They had to take out a couple pallets, reload the entire load to move it to the front as much as possible, and I slid my tandems ALL the way back (I usually have to do this on any load 30k+), go across again, 11,500, 33,920, 33,990. I decided to go to a cat scale just for the assurance, cat scale ticket came out: 11,980, 34,291, 35,870! Needless to say I went back with cat scale in hand and had them take some more off.
BTW for those that don't know what 't-call' is it is a SWIFT term for dropping a trailer at a terminal or drop yard for someone else to pick up. When I drove for swift I t-called quite a few loads that where 44k+ without a scale ticket, simply because they told me the load was too important and time frame too tight, it didn't happen a lot, but it did happen.
Also don't trust them scales in some of the swift yards either, I have found they can usually be quite off.
As far as taping the pig tail, a lot of swift trailers have screwed up connectors, and I always carried a small bungie specific for that purpose, I have had my pig tail fall out of numerous trailers with swift, a couple times at night too!