Question about portable scales

Did you scale the load before the portable got you?

 

I was told +/- 4% accuracy on a portable. The best source of information would be the manufacturer of the scale or the certifying body. In NH, the Department of Agriculture is in charge of weights and measures.

 

Weight shifts on a hill. I watch my pressure gauge go up and down as much as 3500 lbs climbing and descending. Scales are meant to be done on flat ground.

My RI portable scale out, all were very close to each other except one portable read 3,000 lbs heavier. Didn't matter. You can't beat court systems that are in kahootz with each other.

Maybe CatScale can give you some advice. It doesn't matter permanent or portable, they can verify it needs done on flat ground.

 

What do you call a steep grade? All roadways have a certain grade. Mainly from side to side. That is why the vehicle is weighed all at once. Generally the right side is heavier than the left side due to the grade of the roadway. The weight comes off the left side and is shifted to the right. I've weighed thousands of vehicles. Almost all the time when they have a scale ticket or bill I have been just about the same as the bills. I've had some though that I have found get a scale ticket printed, then go back and add more weight on. Have seen where a loading facility print off various tickets that show legal weight, then load the truck to over 100,000 lbs. I've seen a lot of crazy sheet that guys will do to try to get me not to weigh them. However, the tires hold the key to what I am looking at.

The scales I have are in 100 lbs increments, if the scale reads 9550 lbs, it gets rounded down to 9500 lbs. Generally from my experience the vehicle is lighter on portable scales then on static scales. Had 2 today that showed 1000 lbs lighter than the bills did. I'm sure you could call the portable scale manufacturer or look on the net about their procedures. Or the Agency involved.

 

dieselbear has got it going on. No matter what the "grade" or slope of the road is, if all axles are weight at the same time the gross weight and tandem weight will be just about spot on.
Back when I was pulling tanker the DOT at the Delaware water gap where spot checking with portables that weighted only the tandems one at a time, steers, drives, trailer, and it was 6 to 8 inches tall and I was thinking Why in the hell are they wasting mine and there time. Theres no way to get a tandem or gross weight like that with a shotgun tanker. But they tried.

When I was setting up race cars the scales I use would weight down to the ounce. You could take a car on 4 scales with the driver in it and if the driver just stuck his arm out the window it would add left side percentage and add a small amount of weight to the left side and take away from the right side but the gross stays the same.

 

The DOT cops in Michigan have plywood with the the same thickness of the portable. They put the plywood under one axle of the tandem while they weigh the other so the weight is distributed evenly, otherwise as soon as you pull on the scale most the weight on the tandem would transfer to the higher axle(the one on the portable).

 

Yeah I guess DB is right Gross is all that matters. Gross is gross, even if you were hung like a fish.

My experience, I was pulled behind a shopping center on flat ground. 3 scales were close and 1 was way off. I think he didn't calibrate that one right.

 

The only overweight ticket that I got was on portables. I was not over gross but over on the drives of a tri-axle. They said that Pa. allows 2% for being on portables. He also told me that if I would have been on a state route and not on the interstate(I79) I would have been leagal. I told him I would get of at the next exit and go up 19. He said that would be ok if I wanted but that I needed to wait a few minutes till he was done with writing the ticket. Oh well company paid it.