Does anyone remember the driver that was on here a few months ago asking about legal advice for being overweight? i remember the thread but cant find it anymore
An axle overload has cost Southsea owner driver Richard Gyles £978 in fines and costs. He admitted the offence before the Wrexham Magistrates.
The magistrates were told that in May a 3.5-tonne vehicle, driven by Gyles, and loaded with wood carvings, was stopped in a check at the Ewloe weighbridge on the A494. The vehicle was on a journey from Portsmouth to Conway. When weighed, it was found that the maximum permitted weight of the second axle of 2,060kg had been exceeded by 710kg, a 34.47% overload. Furthermore, the maximum permitted gross weight of 3,500kg was exceeded by 1,120kg, a 32% overload.
The magistrates fined Gyles £800 and ordered him to pay prosecution costs of £163 and a £15 victim surcharge.
dont have to much sympathy if he was in an artic 44tonner with a 34% overload hed have weighed somewhere in the region of 60tonne
bet he’d have got a ■■■■ sight more than £800 fine then.
Thinking of the above there was a truck delivering wheat to RHM in Manchester a few weks ago that had to drop the trailer on the weighbridge coz it was too heavy to be weighed (50t max weighbridge)
from what i overheard he was about 48t without the tractor unit(Daf 105)
On the subject of axle weight limits, has anyone tried to find a public weighbridge which will give per-axle readings? It’s [zb]ing difficult to find a weighbridge in the first place (Around here, most of the ones on the list are closed), and I’ve only ever found whole-truck weighbridges.
When we cross the Hungarian-Serbian border, we get weighed by the Hungarian authorities against their limits (which are lower than UK ones). One of our drivers has been fined in the past for having his rear axle over 10 tonnes (even though it was plated to 11.5 tonnes).
How do they expect you to know if you’re overweight if it’s impossible to find a suitable weighbridge? Sure, if you’re 30% overweight you would probably notice it in the tyres and the weigh it handles, but could you tell the difference between an axle carrying 10 tonnes and one carrying 11 tonnes?
Giblsa:
Does anyone remember the driver that was on here a few months ago asking about legal advice for being overweight? i remember the thread but cant find it anymore
tachograph:
There are some similarities but it looks like a different case if you’re thinking of this thread
thats the one i was thinking of, all i could remember wat that it wasnt an artic or big rigid, it was smaller 3.5t or 7.5t.
it seems there is a lot of it out there at the moment, can they not put weighing devices on to flats, tauts, boxes and reefers just like they do on some of the bulkers and tankers? is there a reason not to. i know this wouldnt solve the axle weight problem but it would help stop the overall weight problem!
I know that some dustcarts are fitted with axle weight readouts, so that you know when the lorry is getting to its max weight. they are not always acurate though. i heard a mercedes dustcart had a weigh sensor on it that was spot on though.
(very easy to overload dustcarts especially if its garden waste thats being chucked in the back, i remember when i used to do it some days we would go overweight by 2 tonne on a 24 tonne plated lorry.)
Assuming it was me, I updated said thread a week or so ago with the fact that I haven’t heard anything back.
I am informed that the weighbridge they used is out of calibration, perhaps they knew this, perhaps thats why.
Agreed on the comments about public weighbridges, they are very thin on the ground, often miles out of the way (a large fuel concern these days), and then charge you 10-15 quid for the privaledge, is it any wonder nobody bothers using them. Like every other bit of crap infrastructure provided for the transport industry then.
It’s very easy to find yourself under pressure to take more weight than you are supposed to, particularly on the smaller commercial vehicles and particularly if boss man is stressed or not thinking, or in a hurry to get to the pub. I have been much more strict since being tugged, refused loads etc. Often met with grumbles, complaints or guilt trips which I could do without.
If you know that the excess that you didn’t take will be waiting for you to deliver upon your return from the load that it was planned to go on thus extending yur day, its very easy to justify taking it in your own head (overtime or not). This is not the way it should work, but its no real surprise when it happens.
The vehicles we use (7.5t) really have a very poor payload (although currently some of the best in the class, I have known some newer 7.5t curtain/boxes to have less than 2.5t payload!). We simply cannot use bigger vehicles, because we wouldn’t get them in to any of our customers premises. Its a fairly major catch 22, with the current climate of spiralling costs, there are any number of excuses.
if i know im over weight when im loading, i’ll bounce it back to the TM, he cant legally ask me to take it out overweight.
the way i see it, if im driving flawlessly down the road and some clown manages to find him / herself under / into my truck, no matter that it wasnt my fault, if someones killed i can be done for it becauser i was overweight, could go to jail in some cases.
now the problem is that we dont always know for sure about the weights, but my point is if you know youre gonna be overweight then to hell with them, you dont have to take it as is.
The trick is … if you can find a weighbridge… The ones i have used …
is to DRIVE ON WITH JUST THE FRONT AXLE ON THE WEIGHBRIDGE ( Front Axle Weight) Record the reading some weighbridges have digi readout otherwise ask operator politely to record your readings !!
Then run on with 2nd axle …
Then run on with 3rd axle… And so on.
AXLE ONE 6.200 KG
SECOND AXLE READING 13.780 KG (DEDUCT 6.200 KG) = 7.580
THIRD AXLE READING 23.780 KG (LOADED VEHICLE WEIGHT FOR THIS 3 AXLE RIGID (26000 KG GROSS) DEDUCT 13.780 KG TO GIVE YOU THIRD AXLE WEIGHT.
This is the way to check axle weights to protect yourself from over loading .
Has anyone challenged the accuracy of the VOSA’s weighbridges? When they were last calibrated etc as they could be inaccurate, always best to get a second independent weigh check.
