The Pankian Metaphor 3078

Anne & Lynn Wheeler

Actually, I do not think it very prevalent at all. The reason truck scales are so common is that a bill of lading with a weight is a legal requirement most places ... not only for the requirements of RGW's but also because truckers get paid by the tonne-mile. Few truckers are willing to drive free, and posssesion of a bill of lading is required to get paid. If it has an over-weight load printed on it is taken as proof of being overweight in a court of law, and would also be fraud. The BOL must be provided to any police officer that asks for it, along with the truck licence.

In many places (ontario included), the person running the weigh scale, the driver, and the company owning the load are jointly and severally responsible. There was an instance in Ontario a few years back, where a police officer went into a quarry, and went through 5 years of billing. He then issued several hundred trafic tickets to the foreman of the pit. (the RGW is also a requirement on the BOL) The average ticket was for 50 pounds over, and the average fine was between 1 and 2 thousand dollars.

There was also a case in New York State where an overweight truck caused a rest. It was 20 pounds overweight, the lawsuit was in excess of a million dollars.

There have been very few overweight trucks go out since, anywhere in the province.

Loading a truck to the pound is considered an art form, and I have seen many a driver get on the back with a shovel to get the load down 20-40 pounds. Going out light means the driver is making less, going out heavy leads to legal problems.

The weigh stations are more like having a scale in a meat department, and are certified by the department of weights and measures in the same way. If truckers were going to cheat, they would over-state the weight, not under-state it.

I have no doubts as to the accuracy of any of the above. However, you might wish to find out what a bus actually weighs. It is certainly not a "heavy axle load". It is probably 1-4 of that of a typical stone-gravel carrier or or even a tandem hauling construction rubble.

I suspect the problem is that city streets are designed for very light loads, and so even a bus is close to the design criterea. I'll repeat again that a major reason for most of the above being true is that many of the roads are underdesigned.

It is not unusual, BTW, for a single construction project to strain a road to the point it has to be rebuilt. Road construction materials themselves are probably the heaviest loads arround.

That does not detract from your arguement that the heavy loads are responsible for the vast majority of the wear, but it does infer (IMO) that we are designing our roads badly, and that is exacerbating the problem to a great degree.

Donald