The legal limit on the US highway system is a gross weight of 80,000 pounds. The tandems (drives and trailer) have to be 34,000 or less. So when I picked up a relay at an operating center, weighed it, and had the results above, I was ... well, several things, none of which I can write about and maintain this blog's PG rating. Operations is insisting that I take it back to the shipper in the morning, meaning I waste an entire night here won't be able to make the delivery on time, on top of having to try and get used to being awake during the day again. Instead, I'm going to finish eating, call them, and tell them that I refuse to move an overweight trailer, that I'm not going to lose an entire night of driving because another driver didn't do his job, and that I want another load assigned immediately so I am not out even more miles. I'll post with the results of that later.
Wow. That is rather nuts! Where did the load come from? And yet, I had something like that happen, so I'm not too surprised. Trailer in Sturtevant, came from Chicago. It had one of two things wrong with it, and correcting one only made the other a problem. What clued me in was a note the driver left, saying it was legal with tandems slid all the way back. That's... a problem in WI. Sure, they're a bit more lenient than IL with that, but all the way back? That's too far! And yet if I got it as far back as I could legally get it, I was overweight. My board was not all that happy about that! And, not knowing what is cheaper (overweight or overlength) they didn't feel like having me run it. They asked if I wanted to risk it, but I knew there was one weigh station I would encounter delivering it.
ReplyDeleteGood luck getting a new load! Things seem to be bad out here; you could wind up just being stuck on the load because there's nothing available (that's decent anyways)