MIDNIGHT RIDER
Full Access Member
- Joined
- Sep 29, 2005
- Posts
- 4,639
- Reaction score
- 38
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.
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.