Apologies if this has been covered elsewhere; I have done a couple of searches but couldn’t find what i was looking for.
I am a new driver, out in an 18T rigid today, and was told the load I was collecting was going to be quite heavy, possibly too heavy. It turned out that another truck was sent out with me to halve the load anyway, but I was wondering at the time how to work out the max payload for the vehicle? I checked the vehicle plate, which told me MAM was 18T - front axle was 7T and rear axle was 11T. But these figures are obviously the weight of the vehicle plus its load - but in order to know how much this load weight could actually be, I would need to know the unladen weight over each axle to do the calculation (MAM minus unladen = max payload). The problem is couldn’t see a figure for this ‘unladen weight’, just MAM over each axle, though I looked carefully for it - maybe I just missed it? Had I actually been concerned of overloading in this instance (which I wasn’t thanks to the other truck), I would have called the office to check before departing, of course.
Its been a long day and I am just wondering whether I am being stupid here and cannot see the obvious…
ask ur boss where the nearest weighbridge is and go there with ur truck empty but wit all ur normal gear in i.e all ur straps pallet barrow aand what everelse u need to do ur job plus a full tank of fuel then take ur tare weight from ur gvw/ and then uve got ur payload
when i was on removals i new my wagon had a tare of roughly 5100 with one porter to around 5200 with two
There’s no requirement for the unladen weight of a vehicle to be displayed on the vehicle, the only way of finding out for sure if you’re within the MGW of the vehicle if you know you’ll be somewhere close is to take it to a weighbridge and weigh it once you are loaded. Even with a known unladen weight there are variables such as the amount of fuel you have on board and it’s rare the exact weight of the load is known as you often have pallets and such to add onto the weight of the product.
Hants_Driver:
… but I was wondering at the time how to work out the max payload for the vehicle?
Hi Hants_Driver, You’d do that exactly the way farmer said, but don’t forget to include yourself in the weight by remaining in the cab whilst you weigh the vehicle in order to get it spot-on.
Keep the weight ticket (or a copy) for future reference.
Hants_Driver:
Its been a long day and I am just wondering whether I am being stupid here and cannot see the obvious…
No mate, you sure ain’t stupid, cos the only stupid question is the one that you don’t ask.
Public weighbridges will charge you for a printed ticket which you’ll probably struggle to reclaim from your boss just to weigh an empty wagon. What I’ve done is park on the weighbridge and wander in to the office and ask for directions somewhere making sure I get a look at the weight on the reader.
There are more than one way of skinning a cat. Have a look at the load first, to simplify it by example. Say you are loading bags of sugar or salt, these are sold by weight, the supplier isn’t going to give sugar away so the pallets or paperwork should be marked accurately, 1000 x 1kg or 500 x 2kg etc.
Similarly a can of drink holds 330ml or 33cl, making 3 tins to a litre. a litre of water is 1kg, alcohol is lighter, cola, heavier, a slab of 24 cans will weigh around 8kg. Obviously as Repton pointed out, dont forget the weight of a stillage or pallet, again 495 blue pallets weighed about 21 tonne making a pallet about 42kg
Think very roughly, 10t on a 4 wheel rigid 18t on a 6wheel rigid, 25t on a 5 axle artic, 29t on a 6 axle artic with a curtainside body.
Buyer beware though, check weigh at earliest opportunity, because a public weighbridge ticket is cheaper than the fine
Keep the weight ticket (or a copy) for future reference.