I’ve been browsing through a few years/decades old posts about highway weigh stations (why so few are ever open, etc.), but I have some unanswered questions.
Suppose your truck is overloaded (detected either at a supervised weigh station or checking weight on a scale at a truck stop) - what do you do with the excess weight? Call the company for another truck? Give it to another driver? Are you stuck at the weigh station until you do something? Or can you continue your trip with a fine (or maybe a warning)?
What about ice and snow on the roof? If you’re close to the limit, are you expected to clear the stuff off before being weighed? That could be a hassle if everything is frozen solid.
Think about it. The point of weighbridges is to make sure that overloaded (and therefore dangerous) trucks are kept off the road and to deter operators from doing it.
In the UK at least, overloaded trucks are regularly impounded until the problem is rectified. The officials do have some discretion so a few kilos over may just earn a fine or even a slap on the wrist. Of course, operators who like to run at maximum weights only employ slim drivers.
Ice and snow should always be removed before driving as it can blow off and cause an accident.
In the US, the driver or their employer can be subject to massive fines. In some US states, the driver can spend up to two months in jail. From what I’ve read, the truck is not allowed to leave a weigh station in overweight condition; IOW, it’s staying there until enough cargo can be offloaded or transferred to another truck. Assuming your cargo is palletized or otherwise too massive to move by hand, you won’t just need another truck, you’ll need a forklift and a pallet jack to facilitate a transfer.
Weight limits are about highway safety and about limiting wear and tear on the pavement. Neither of those things care if your truck is heavy because of cargo or because of accumulated snow/ice. The weigh station scales don’t care either. If your truck is found to be overweight, regardless of cause, you are in Trouble.
As for why so few are open…enforcement costs money. If you can deter overloaded trucks by having just one weigh station open here and there, that’s a sensible way to keep your enforcement budget reasonable. The same logic applies to IRS audits of only a small portion of tax returns, cops who aren’t actually present on every corner, and EPA emissions audits of only a small portion of new vehicle models.
Not trying to hijack the thread or anything, but how do you clear snow and ice off the top of a semi? (I know the answer is frequently “You don’t.” I’ve been behind plenty of semis on the highway with large chunks of snow and ice flying off the top.)
When I was in landscaping, we had a run in with this. We took down a massive tree, and were transporting it to the sawmill, and there was a weigh station on the way.
We ended up being about 11,000 pounds over the rated weight of the truck. It was pretty much just one giant chunk of wood, so not much luck in breaking it down into smaller loads. We were advised to go back and rent a truck that would be rated for the weight, and transfer the tree to that one.
(I was in a follow car, so we did have transportation other than the overloaded truck.)
So, my boss went back at night when they were closed, and drove off with it. He would have had a $1,100 fine ($0.10 per pound), but ended up with a $20,000 fine, and wasn’t able to enter Indiana anymore out of fear of being arrested.
Could have been worse, as I’m sure that 11,000 pounds over the rated weight meant that he was being extremely dangerous, and he could have ended up hurting himself or others.
As far as ice and snow, a truck should clear that off before driving, but I know they don’t, as I see hunks of snow and ice coming off trucks fairly often in that sort of weather. However, at highway speeds, it’s unlikely that it will stick around long, and will probably be long gone before you encounter a weigh station.
Former truck dispatcher here, yes the extra weight has to come off the truck. If you are local they may allow some leeway as to how you get that done. If you aren’t too far away from where you got the load they may let you return to take some off.
I was away on another business event one day when the customer service people decided that there was more room available on a truck hauling fish feed to Michigan, so they filled it up. It only made it to the Columbia River gorge before being held at a weigh station. Fortunately, there are several other fish hatcheries in the gorge and they let the truck go to one and drop off a couple tons and return to be reweighed, and then proceed on. If that option was not allowed, then we would have had to send another truck to off load the excess.
It probably wasn’t a by the book solution but they made it clear to the driver that if he did not return after taking the weight off he could be expected to get arrested and the load impounded. Most truck drivers are very aware of how much weight they are hauling, how much goes over each axle, etc, because these tickets can get very expensive. But so are the roads that get ruined by over-weight trucks.
At state line weigh stations, I sometimes see signs saying drivers with transponders aren’t required to stop. Is there some sort of auto-weighing system on those trucks? Or do their terminals have a trusted agreement with the officials such that each truck transmits a pre-entered weight as it passes?
Note: Going from memory, but I’m pretty sure that’s what the signs said.
The PrePass website still doesn’t explain how the actual weight is established. Is the “qualified fleet” which originates the truck established as trustworthy enough no weigh-in is needed? Or does the PrePass send some weight value to the station as it approaches?
I understand that companies can prove a level of trust such as I described. When I delivered airplanes years ago, a representative at the Cessna factory explained to me they no longer weigh each plane at the end of the production line. Their processes are so well automated that the weight of each plane is predicted based on options and even upholstery choices. The FAA only occasionally shows up to weigh a few sample planes and ensure they’re within tolerances. It seems that some well-automated freight terminals (maybe like UPS/FedEx) could do this as well. And I wonder if the occasional instruction for transponder equipped trucks to pull into the station is merely a routine sampling?
Based on the PrePass website and this video by what appears to be an independent source, I think you’ve hit it: there is a level of trust established when you apply for a PrePass, and based on that, you get to bypass active weigh stations.
Most of the time.
Just like the IRS/EPA/TSA, even if you’ve established that trust up front, a small percentage of PrePass users get randomly flagged to pull into the weigh station for a check.
I think that’s a whole different thing than PrePass. Weigh-in-motion systems do include a transponder on the truck, and this is a system that helps truckers get through the weigh station process more quickly than they used to, but they still have to get off the highway and roll over the scales. The PrePass system lets truckers completely bypass the weigh station at cruising speed without ever being weighed.
It didn’t always used to be so. From National Geographic, Feb 1974:
“The highway official working the scales at the Evanston, Wyoming, port of entry told me he’s more lenient about the truck load limit during a snowstorm, A storm can add as much as a ton in snow and ice to the weight of a big rig, and it is not fair to hold a trucker accountable for that.”
Back in 2015 Mrs. L and I bought a 21 foot campervan. As we suspected, they have weight ratings and a lot of people don’t factor in the water and fuel they’re carrying etc., plus you’re supposed to be careful about not putting all the weight on one side or the other etc.
In any event, one of the things I read on line is that some state weigh stations leave their scales turned on when nobody is there. Some people would pull up and weigh their campers. IIRC that was out east, like New Jersey or something and while I would have been tempted to try, the ones I see usually have some sort of barricade to prevent people from pulling in when nobody is on duty.
The alternative is to pay to use the CAT scales at a truck stop, I guess.
You should note that it’s not just the total weight of the rig, but the weight imposed on each axle. This can give drivers with split loads a problem.
The trailer might have two deliveries and weigh in at just under the limits. The problem arises when half the load is removed, leaving all of the rest at the front of the trailer. This can overload the drive axle of the tractor unit.
With heavy, indivisible loads, it’s easy to get it wrong. I once had to ship a large microwave generator on a trip involving a ferry crossing. To keep costs down I used a two-axle flatbed truck with a weight limit about 100k on the right side. The generator was several feet shorter than the bed of the truck and I spent some time calculating the exact correct place to place it and put marks on the truck as a guide.
I wasn’t there when the truck was loaded and the driver insisted that he knew better. I got a fine because the front axle was 200kg overweight.
It can be a trust system, that the trucks depot (loading point ) is feeding correct data to the authoritiies, and not allowing their system to be used to bypass the law. (eg, gets a half load and loads the transponder system to allow h bypass, then goes elsewhere to get an overweight load and then hits the roads. )
It also means that if you did go into a weighbridge along the roads, you may then bypass the next weighbridges, so that you don’t have to get weighed multiple times for the same journey . If you have a large break in the journey, the bypass database will expire you and you have to enter the weighbridge, but its not so much harm done. its almost always allowing the bypass.
Note that California states they may still do random inspections of vehicles eligible to bypass.
Its not actually required to have a transponder because the checkpoint can read the truck and trailers license plates ? why not just have a big sign saying "enter " or “bypass” as required.
