Crash diet

I haven't had an Orange Crush in--what? Forty years?

Maybe. For some reason I lost my taste for the things long ago. But caffeine didn't seem like a good idea just now, and a change of pace did. So...

Hm. Not bad.

Freshly showered, sipping on a slightly different soda. I am calm and comfortable now.

Less so a few hours ago.

I'd just picked up what the customer said was about twenty-one tons of something or other,* and here I was at the nearest truck stop, weighing the truck. That's important. There are very particular rules about how much the rig can weigh, and how that weight is distributed. To be specific, the steer wheels (up front) can have no more than 12,000 pounds on them, and neither the drive wheels nor the trailer's tandem wheels may support more than 34,000. A little arithmetic will tell you the whole rig may only weight 80,000. To carry more, I'd need a special permit.

Gross weight isn't usually a problem--this set of rules has been in effect for quiet some time, and the shippers are used to working with it. Distributing that weight takes a bit more work and worry.

The trailer wheels are mounted so they can be slid back and forth. Just retract a set of big thick steel pins and move the tandems to where they'll be under enough weight to balance the load. If things get hairy, you can move the "fifth wheel" trailer hitch on the back of the truck in a similar fashion--not fun, but doable.

So you go to a truck stop and pull your rig onto a great big platform scale. (Most truck stops these days have a fairly elaborate one that weighs each set of wheels separately, so you can get all four weights at the same time.) You call the fuel desk and let them know you're there. They confirm they have your weights. You pull off the scale, park, go inside, and pay the nice lady (you didn't think this was free, did you?). She gives you a certified weight ticket.

You look at it and sigh in relief, then get back in your truck and go on down the road.

Or you cuss a little, go back out, spend a few minutes adjusting the wheel positions, and try again.

Either way, you usually get things arranged fairly well without spending TOO much time at it.

Then there's today.

The customer's twenty-one tons was acting more like twenty-three. The truck was within 250 pounds of the legal limit for gross weight. I'd never been quite that heavy before.

But wait. There's more.

The steers were a little light. The tandems were a little light. The drive wheels were a good six hundred pounds over. And you can't adjust the weight in tiny amounts**--if I got the drives legal then either the tandems or the drive wheels would be overweight.

Oh, and did I mention I hadn't fueled the truck yet? There's another 800-1000 pounds right there.

Well, obviously I wasn't going to fuel. With luck, I wouldn't run out before I got to the customer. With care and luck I could balance the weight enough to satisfy the DOT--they do occasionally cut us a little slack, I'm told; and by the time I passed a scale house I might have burned enough fuel to be legal. So I rearranged the wheels as best I could and weighed the truck again.

Everything looked good.

Everything looked very good.

Everything looked too good.

I had weight to spare on all three wheelsets. That was not possible.

So I looked at the gross weight. Apparently about a ton of my cargo had evaporated while I was sweating with the wheel positions. Or else the scale was wrong.

I weighed a third time, on the other scale (this was a big truck stop--they had two scales). It agreed with the new reality. I still can't fuel (the trailer is nose-heavy--I can't move any more weight off the drive wheels to make room for fuel), but at least I'm legal.

I'll take what I can get.
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*No, I won't tell you what. See here for reasons why.
**Those pins I mentions snap into matching holes. As a rough rule of thumb, each hole represents 250 lbs more (or less) weight on the tandems and 250 lbs less (or more) on the drive wheels.