How Much Does Your Truck Weigh?

MIDNIGHT RIDER

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Does this sound accurate to anyone else, or should I be questioning ths guys scale - and the amount I just got paid for my scrap metal?


Having played the stock-yard game my whole life, I have seen just about every trick in the book when it comes to a set of scales.

I have seen guys instruct their kids to just happen to be hanging on the scale-pen while their cattle are being weighed; if someone notices them and says anything, they just play innocent little kids that didn't know any better. :angel:

A penny placed on the beam at the right place/time when you punch the ticket can add or deduct fifty pounds or so, depending on who's selling what to whom.

When weighing such things as grain trucks, to save time and keep things moving, it is common practice to only weigh the empty truck once and deduct that weight ( TARE ) from all the loaded weights.

Unscrupulous farmers will bring that first load in with the engine running on fumes, the glove-box and tool-box emptied, they will take a bath, evacuate their intestines, and they won't eat breakfast; plus, they will try to be real quick to hop out and be certain that they aren't weighed in the truck.

After getting the TARE established, they will keep the fuel-tank plumb up in the spout, put wheel-bearings in the glove-box, every wrench they own in the tool-box, three 12-ton bottle-jacks in the floor-board, several log-chains, boomers and such behind the seat, and remain in that seat until the weight is taken; and they will sell this extra weight to the grain buyer every time the loaded truck is weighed.

For generations, buyers have known of this behavior and just figured it into the price paid; however, in these times of stiff competition and close margins, many have resorted to weighing IN and OUT at every load, regardless of the time lost.





Although it could all just be an honest mistake, as in maybe one of your tires wasn't completely on the scales when you took your TARE weight, thus your truck weighing less, it is also possible that the guy meant to hook you and instead hooked himself.

Like I stated in an earlier post, in order to make your PAYLOAD weigh less, he should have made your TARE weigh MORE, not less.

If that be the case, and he has been doing this regularly, he ain't gonna show much of a profit when he tallys up at the end of the year. LOL
 

TBigLug

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Wow, your guys' trucks are HEAVY. My '86 with me and a buddy and two full tanks of fuel only tipped in at 5,800 lbs. on their scale. It's an accurate one too, they have it tested every year and recalibrated when necessary.
 

sootman73

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Places like that are weighing what you bring in. A long as that is acurate who cares? So it's off by 500lbs initially, it will still be off by 500lbs on the way out, you aren't being screwed. Again, they only have to have an accurate DIFFERENCE of weight.

Thats not often what happens when a scale is not calibrated correctly the error can be more or less at different weights. so he could have had a 6000lb truck with 500 lbs of scrap on it but the scale would weight the truck at 6000 but could weigh the loaded truck at 6250 instead of 6500. Its in the calibration and not that a gauge is simply off zero......
 

jwalterus

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fuel sold at the pump is measured in gallons

fuel sold to the station is measured in pounds

it's just easier to measure 5000 gallons by weight
 

RustyBolts

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The truck in my avatar, 1996 Chevy C3500 Ext Cab Dually, 350 Vortec, weighs 6000# without me in it, and about a 1/2 tank of gas, as checked by the pulling scales at the Meigs County Fairgrounds.
About a month after weighing it, i was told by the county auditor that the scale in question was an average of 25# to the heavy side.
 
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