What Would You Do Part 3

So I got permission from Daniel B so that I didn't totally hijack his idea lol.

Even tho I'm not a veteran yet, this is the situation I had on the load I just delivered and I feel it fits into this category well. I'll try to give every piece of info I have and if you have any questions feel free to ask them.

So we start the day in Norfolk Virginia with full hours and 48 hours available on the 70. The pickup location is a small mom and pop cold storage run by a just a single man. There is no pickup appointment. Only instructions to call 1 hour before arriving.

The delivery is for 04:00 the next morning and the actual miles are 78 empty and 373 loaded.

On the previous night we were at a receiver until 21:00 with only enough time to drive to the truck stop down the road and shut down.

At 07:30 we're able to start the day with 78 miles to drive to the shipper and full tanks of fuel. The route is U.S. highway 17 until you reach the county road that the shipper is on.

So after 45 mph speed zones and construction, it takes 1:45 to arrive at the shipper and then 45 minutes to be loaded and ready to roll. It is now 10:00

So we've got 9:15 on our 11 hr clock, 11:30 on our 14 and the 70 is of no concern.

Now comes the issue. There is no certified scale close by. The route information we're given says to take highway 17 back to Norfolk then U.S. highway 13 for the majority of the trip.

Paperwork shows 40,601 pounds. I know that my tare weight (empty weight) with full tanks is approximately 36,000 lbs rounding up.

The nearest cat scale period is 43 miles in the opposite direction of the route we are supposed to take. The nearest scale on route is at the truck stop we left this morning. 78 miles away.

Looking at the atlas we know that we will not be crossing any weigh stations no matter which way we choose to do this.

So, do you drive out of route to the closer cat scale to ensure that your weights are legal, or do you stay on route and stop at the first scale you come to which is 78 miles away?

You do have the authority to go to the closer scale but you do have to then come back to the route given to continue the trip.

As always, vet guys please let the rookies have a fair crack at this before you jump in too much.

Go back to the truck stop. You're going to have no more than 35 miles more that way unweighed than you would have to drive out of route anyway, and you know you're safe on gross weight by 3000 pounds.

I will add that you're driving through North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Also the gross weight was hand written on the BOL.

you know you're safe on gross weight by 3000 pounds.

Also the gross weight was hand written on the BOL.

Snappy, I don't usually concern myself with weights on axles too much because I pull trailers with 102" split axles. I will generally be overweight gross before I am overweight on my tandems , but I just want to point out here that you really shouldn't trust the weights on your BOL's. I remember one time I had a shipper load me and the weight on the bills looked good. But as soon as I started pulling that load I knew something wasn't right, it just felt too heavy. After I scaled the load and subtracted my truck and trailer weight I had about 52,000 pounds of freight on my truck. I studied my route, figured out how to avoid the two scales I was going to hit, and then sent my dispatcher a message on the qualcomm explaining why I was going to go out of route to get the job done. Some of the shippers will do this on purpose, not a lot, but some. It is always best to go with the certified scales whenever possible. You really don't know anything until you've gotten on the scale.

If I remember correctly the bills showed around 46,000 pounds. Now you may be wondering why I ran this illegal load, and here's the reason. I made this judgement call, nobody forced me to do it, in fact I would have had every right to refuse it. My time is valuable to me, and I wanted to get the job done and move on to the next load. Call me mercenary if you like, but I don't like wasting anything, especially my time. Every day a truck driver has to make choices that are sometimes in the grey areas of right and wrong. The successful ones know how to think on their feet and make things happen. I could have wasted the whole day and not made a dime, but I knew if I could just get this one done then I could move on to the next load and have this problem behind me.

I apologize, I didn't mean to high jack this thread, but I just wanted to point out that you can't always trust those numbers on the BOL, and then I decided I better address what people will be wondering about me running that load.

I figured hand written weight is probably wrong weight... so, the big difference is choosing a closer scale that's out of the route, or driving a little farther and staying in route? You've got a chance at getting screwed up anyway, so why not stay in the route? If you go to the closer scales out of the route, it seems like you're just locking in a loss of time.

So I got permission from Daniel B so that I didn't totally hijack his idea lol.

Even tho I'm not a veteran yet, this is the situation I had on the load I just delivered and I feel it fits into this category well. I'll try to give every piece of info I have and if you have any questions feel free to ask them.

So we start the day in Norfolk Virginia with full hours and 48 hours available on the 70. The pickup location is a small mom and pop cold storage run by a just a single man. There is no pickup appointment. Only instructions to call 1 hour before arriving.

The delivery is for 04:00 the next morning and the actual miles are 78 empty and 373 loaded.

On the previous night we were at a receiver until 21:00 with only enough time to drive to the truck stop down the road and shut down.

At 07:30 we're able to start the day with 78 miles to drive to the shipper and full tanks of fuel. The route is U.S. highway 17 until you reach the county road that the shipper is on.

So after 45 mph speed zones and construction, it takes 1:45 to arrive at the shipper and then 45 minutes to be loaded and ready to roll. It is now 10:00

So we've got 9:15 on our 11 hr clock, 11:30 on our 14 and the 70 is of no concern.

Now comes the issue. There is no certified scale close by. The route information we're given says to take highway 17 back to Norfolk then U.S. highway 13 for the majority of the trip.

Paperwork shows 40,601 pounds. I know that my tare weight (empty weight) with full tanks is approximately 36,000 lbs rounding up.

The nearest cat scale period is 43 miles in the opposite direction of the route we are supposed to take. The nearest scale on route is at the truck stop we left this morning. 78 miles away.

Looking at the atlas we know that we will not be crossing any weigh stations no matter which way we choose to do this.

So, do you drive out of route to the closer cat scale to ensure that your weights are legal, or do you stay on route and stop at the first scale you come to which is 78 miles away?

You do have the authority to go to the closer scale but you do have to then come back to the route given to continue the trip.

As always, vet guys please let the rookies have a fair crack at this before you jump in too much.

I would stay in route. This would save time. If you weighed and found you were over on legal gross weight you could always make decision at that point. If your weight is good you can make any axle adjustments and proceed. Thus saving a lot of time. Time is money.