I am working for a company driving 3.5 ton sprinters and luton vans delivering laundry to hotels in sacks each one weighs in at 15 kg I leave the factory. Every day with between 150 and 200 sacks and return with the same most days I can’t get two fingers between the tyre and wheel arch I am carrying double the legal load yet if I protest I am told to go home and they will get someone who will do it they also want the laundry back asap so expect you to work 10 to 12 hours straight without breaks I’m getting very stressed out about it but feel I can’t leave as won’t be able to claim or they may give me bad reference don’t know what to do any advice ■■?
refuse to take it out, get sent home, repeat until sacked. claim unfair dismissal etc, and tell vosa.
Checkweigh, even if you have to pay for it yourself at a public weighbridge. If vehicle is grossly overweight, you are breaking the law. Take it back, and tell boss if he sacks you and gives you a negative reference you will take the weight ticket to VOSA and tell them what you have been expected to do.
They are not allowed to give a bad reference, all they an do on that score is refuse to give one.
If you do decide that you are leaving the company then before you do, and if you are positive you are massively overloaded, phone your local DVSA check point and book your load in for a weigh on the scales explaining that this is the load you are expected to take out.
You are allowed on the road by the most direct route to the weighbridge as long as it’s pre-booked.
If it turns out that you ARE overloaded then phone a friend to come and pick you up and leave the keys with the DVSA guys, get a lift back to your yard to pick up your own car and tell the gaffer where he can find his van, let him explain why he is pushing the van out with that weight on.
Also to add what the others have said,an overloaded sprinter sounds bloody unsafe and unstable to me. Even loaded with just 2 pallets in a conventional van or a few cages in a box,they always seem twitchy to me.(especially at speed).
I estimate you’re grossing 4 1/4 to 5 ton depending on number of sacks which is totally unsafe.
As everyone says, take it to the weighbridge but make sure you phone DVSA first as you won’t get nicked if it’s voluntary.
Is your boss THE boss, or does he have a boss?
If it’s the latter, tell YOUR boss that the next time you are asked to overload the vehicle you intend to escalate the situation by invoking the company disputes procedure with HIS boss.
By law, the company should have a disputes procedure.
If it doesn’t, then you can take them to an industrial tribunal.
If YOUR boss is THE boss, then do the weighbridge thing with VOSA (DVSA now) as advised above.
Then call the local paper and BBC radio, supply them with a list of your customer drops as well.
Tell em to get ■■■■■■ you ain’t taking an overloaded van out. If they threaten you with the sack get your phone out and when he asks what you’re doing say, " I’m giving the chaps at VOSA/DVSA a ring to see if they would like to come and have a chat with you"
That should shut the ■■■■■ up. Only trouble is if they come in and ■■■■ them down then if you have other drivers there then you are leaving them in the ■■■■ but what can you do? Nobody can force any driver to take out an overloaded truck/van. What you can do if you think it is overweight is take it to the nearest weighbridge, check the weight and if it is over go back to your yard but you’re only allowed to go back the same way you came, show him the weighbridge ticket and say, “get it sorted or get ■■■■■■!” And move on to pastures new.
Would be easier and less hassle to just leave, you will never change the way they operate.
Does this company mean more to you than your life?
If you get pulled, it’s your licence that’s going to get hammered, and you’ll likely loose the job anyway s you won have a licence, or a heavily penalised one.
Dob them in, refuse to take the van out. Let them fire you… I’m sure an industrial tribunal would love to hear from your boss how refusing to break the law is cause for dismissal.
First thing is that you have to decide what YOU want to do.
Stay and put up with it till the time you get pulled or have an accident, then watch your boss deny he knew that YOU overloaded it that day.
Leave and put it behind you.
As for leaving / staying and going to the tribunal. There is a very strict procedure to follow for that route and it WILL cost you money to use it. So before I give you the advice of what you should do, you need to decide what it is that you want.
H.
Sounds like a place where I used to work, but was with plant / machines on a 7.5 tonner.
And, it was BEFORE I joined here, so didn’t know what to do and so left.
Since then, learned a lot and looking back… I should have nailed him! 
So… I think you should do the same, shop the £$%^&!
OK, it may put others out of work, but at least their licences ‘should be’ intact too…?
dannyp78:
I am working for a company driving 3.5 ton sprinters and luton vans delivering laundry to hotels in sacks each one weighs in at 15 kg I leave the factory. Every day with between 150 and 200 sacks and return with the same most days I can’t get two fingers between the tyre and wheel arch I am carrying double the legal load yet if I protest I am told to go home and they will get someone who will do it they also want the laundry back asap so expect you to work 10 to 12 hours straight without breaks I’m getting very stressed out about it but feel I can’t leave as won’t be able to claim or they may give me bad reference don’t know what to do any advice ■■?
Really? how do you know that they all weigh the same? Have you weighed one or are you just guessing? Surely not every customer sends exactly the same amount of laundry every time. While it is very easy to underestimate how much a load weighs the opposite is equally true.You are going to be in a right old fix if you weigh the vehicle and it is well under its legal maximum. Because so many vans run around well under their maximum, one that is fully loaded looks odd.
However if the sacks really do weigh that much then go ahead and do what is suggested.
150 bags of laundry is an insane amount to be loading on a 3.5 tonne van. If he is leaving the factory with that number he will be returning with a similar number, which the company has no control over how they are packed. Some customers are determined to stuff as many wet towels in a bag as possible with no regard well being for the driver that has to carry them and they can easily be over 25kg each.
We always assumed an average of at least 20kg per bag. 350 bags was a heavy load to be delivering on a 15 tonner and I could maybe get about 400 on if it was a trunk to the factory and didn’t need space to work through drops. But anything more than 100 bags on our 7.5t LF had to be loaded carefully - put them all at the back end and the wheel arches would rub the tyres at every corner.
Read all of the above - twice.
Justs so’s ya gets the message.
And then post again when you’ve done the right thing.
Before you make a decision, get the facts. Get to a weighbridge and make sure. Don’tfeel guilty about dropping your boss in it, he won’t feel guilty about you losing your licence, or worse!
When things go wrong, the only question that matters is “who’s to blame”? Don’t let the answer be “you are”.
Tell them to eff off. Your licence, your safety. I’ve recently finished with a company running vans, where the “Operations director” knew that the scales at Dover were way out. FACT! 
Janos:
Checkweigh, even if you have to pay for it yourself at a public weighbridge. If vehicle is grossly overweight, you are breaking the law. Take it back, and tell boss if he sacks you and gives you a negative reference you will take the weight ticket to VOSA and tell them what you have been expected to do.
+1
cav551:
dannyp78:
I am working for a company driving 3.5 ton sprinters and luton vans delivering laundry to hotels in sacks each one weighs in at 15 kg I leave the factory. Every day with between 150 and 200 sacks and return with the same most days I can’t get two fingers between the tyre and wheel arch I am carrying double the legal load yet if I protest I am told to go home and they will get someone who will do it they also want the laundry back asap so expect you to work 10 to 12 hours straight without breaks I’m getting very stressed out about it but feel I can’t leave as won’t be able to claim or they may give me bad reference don’t know what to do any advice ■■?Really? how do you know that they all weigh the same? Have you weighed one or are you just guessing? Surely not every customer sends exactly the same amount of laundry every time. While it is very easy to underestimate how much a load weighs the opposite is equally true.You are going to be in a right old fix if you weigh the vehicle and it is well under its legal maximum. Because so many vans run around well under their maximum, one that is fully loaded looks odd.
However if the sacks really do weigh that much then go ahead and do what is suggested.
From my experience of loading sacks of spuds, I’d say that if you are lifting ‘identical’ weights all the time, you get quite good at identifying those that are ‘under’ or ‘over’…2 - 3 kg over or under on a 20 kg bag of spuds was easily noticed.