4.30am, yesterday morning (Friday), I am sent to a local scrap metal yard, on tractive hire. Meet their drivers and am directed to one of their bulk tippers. Hitch up, check trailer for legality, all appears ok. Check paperwork, shows trailer holding 20tons of bailed cars (I have a 6x2 unit) so all ok. Now with a total unit weight of 34.5tons, the trip to Avonmouth should be a doddle.
Anyway, truck struggles with hills, so I’m thinking this load is more than 20tons. Because my unit has no tipping gear, I have to drop the trailer, while one of the other lads tips and I return with it empty.
I never did get told the exact weight on trailer.
My question is this, at 4.30am, there is NO way of weighing the trailer (office wallers still in land of zzzzz’s ), so do I take it on the paperwork
What advice can you guys and gals offer?
I’ve told my boss, that I’m not happy with situation and not to put me on it again.
once that trailer is on your 5th wheel, for all intents and purposes its your responsability!
the weight, the roadworthiness, the lot!
you cannot legally rely on weigh tickets as proof of weight, if its over, its your (and your employers) responsability, so be warned!
you will be ok if you get a pull but are on the way to the nearest scales, but you MUST be on the way to the NEAREST scales!
Now with a total unit weight of 34.5tons, the trip to Avonmouth should be a doddle.
Anyway, truck struggles with hills, so I’m thinking this load is more than 20tons.
John
Id have to disagree with that, if you have a 20 ton payload on, plus unit and trailer, as you say up around the 35ton mark, 35 ton is no walk in the park so im not surprised that it struggled up some hills.
Unless of course you are driving a V8 580 scanny or something.
I got done up by some zb.
I had collected the trailer from the yard, looked at the paper work & all looked fine, yes when out on the road the unit felt a bit sluggish, but as it was an under powerd volvo that was no surprise, the real surprise came when looking at the delivery point paper work, either the collection point weigh bridge was badly out or the unit used weighed over 4 tons more than mine, or the weights had been a pack of lies.
I asked the company, if they wanted 5 tons of load for free & got the weights alterd.
another thing to watch out for when reading weigh notes, if the trailer was loaded then weighed with a shunter, you could be 3 or 4 ton out, where i used to work, they had a little ford cargo shunter that only just weighed 5 ton!
), so do I take it on the paperwork 
