I got loaded last night at this mail distribution place and I've been there before so I had a feeling I would have problems with the weight. being a truck driver, there are weight limits for your axles and for your total weight.
your drive and trailer axles can only be 34,000 pounds maximum and your steer tires can only be 12,000 pounds maximum, which allows for a gross total of 80,000 pounds. write about 12 o'clock last night as I was almost falling asleep, I got a knock on the door from the yard guy who told me my trailer was finished loading. so I walk in to get all my paperwork and the driver in front of me came back with the scale ticket that said he was 37,000 lbs on his drives and he had already adjusted all the way to you could. the saddest detail of that was that he had to drive 40 miles each way to the scale and back.
so I got under my trailer and slept for the rest of the night. I got up this morning and went to scale, thankfully the nearest scale that was open was only 15 miles away.
the first time I scaled I was 34,140 pounds on my drives and 11,660 on my steers. so I slid my fifth wheel forward literally about an inch and it added over 500 pounds to the steers. when I went into the scale house there was a woman there and also a mechanic sticking his head out the door.
my whole reason for posting this information is to show you just how few people think logically. I told the lady how surprised I was so much weight has been shifted over 1 inch and she told me
"for every notch you slide your fifth wheel it's supposed to shift 500 pounds, and every notch you slide your trailer axles it's supposed to shift 250 pounds."
I then proceeded to tell her that's actually backwards to industry standard myth.
then I gave her the logical understanding that depending on how much weight you have in your trailer to begin wit,h that would actually determine how much weight you are shifting when you change the overall distance between the two axles. if you have forty three thousand pounds inside your trailer each hole you move my equal 700 pounds, whereas carrying only fourteen thousand pounds might equal only 200 pounds per hole. The variables increase further by the fact that not every load is the same product from the nose to the tail, in my case it is far heavier in the nose than the tail.
I've literally got like 10 feet of trailer hanging over the back of my trailer axle filled with product and its still only 29,600 pounds.
so anyways, being the reluctant to go back 15 miles and wait an hour or two to get the weight moved around, I called my office, told them about my weight and asked what they wanted me to do.
then I heard one of the most ridiculous things I've heard from them in a while, which was "the head mechanic is here and he says you are rated to carry 13,500 pounds on the steers".
I was very certain that was incorrect, as I've always been told the steer maximum is 12,000 pounds. a few minutes later I got a phone call saying that that was incorrect and that the maximum in some states is 12,500 pounds. I decided to google it myself and it turns out that the federal law states that no state can limit any single axle to under 20,000 lbs unless the actual tolerance of the axle itself is rated less. so in our case, our axles are rated for 13,500 pounds. the tires must also meet the capacity of this rating. as long as the gross weight of the vehicle does not exceed 80,000 pounds and neither of the dual axles don't exceed 34,000 lbs we can load the steers up to 13.5 :)
on a totally unrelated note here is a chart.
the japanese yen has been losing value big time over the last few months. I went ahead and closed this straight out last night for the amount you see. I've got a long day ahead of me, but when I stop I might post more about what's actually going on with my trading. I might even decide to explain it while I'm driving the rest of my day who knows.
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