Get on board
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Rarely a week goes by without CM reporting an operator being dealt with for overloading offences. The message is clear; carry more than you should and the courts will come down on you like a tonne of bricks.
The 1991 Road Traffic Act doesn't discriminate between haulage contractors and dishes out some pretty frightening penalties to firms large and small.
Fines of up to £5,000 per offence can make grown tippermen weep and there's also the very likely after-effects on both driver and operator licensing.
But some courts follow a sensible approach when dealing with some offenders.
Earlier this year Oakham operator Aitken and Merry feared the worst when one of its artics was found to be two tonnes over the top.
However, when Loughborough magistrates heard that A&M had already bitten the bullet and invested more than £30,000 in weighing equipment for its 13 artics it dealt with this single black mark quite leniently. Unfortunately, it didn't get the driver his job back but a mere £5 fine reflected responsible attitudes from both the haulier and the bench.
More and more fleets are taking the professional way of avoiding such problems and having weighing devices added to new vehicles on-line, or retro-fitted to existing ones. Systems are also available for tippers with underfloor rams, waste collection trucks, skip carriers and lorries fitted with loading cranes.
Emsworth, Hampshire manufacturer Straightpoint even offers alarmed weighing hooks for warehouse work—so there's really no excuse.
After a successful appeal against an overloading offence West Auckland contractor Harry Tennick decided to turn to Maywood. His 19-tractor stable is a mixed one of nine Scanias, five Volvos, a couple each of Mercs and Ivecos and one Daf.
Tried and tested
His trailers are almost all Fruehauf. He favours the tried-and-tested chassis and bathtub body design for a number of reasons, particularly for its excellent build quality.
Most important is the sentry box front end with its recessed Edbro ram. This enables workshop manager Kenny Titshall to add the safety platform and steps on the front end so that the driver can unfurl the Sidewinder tarp across the laden body in relative safety Flex-Con fits the Sidewinders and then Tennick attaches the straps where it wants them. "We're more than happy with the system and they're just down the road at Northallerton if we want help," says Titshall.
Tennick first noted Maywood's weighers at the 1992 RHA TipCon exhibition and liked the idea straight away as four or five times a week some of his artics were a couple of tonnes light. Losing revenue this way was intolerable so he was eager to make use of them. Initially they were retro-fitted but now Tennick's new trailers come ready wired and the Tiploader kits are added at his West Auckland workshop.
They comprise two load cells either side of the rear hinge bar, an unusual presscoder unit in the hydraulic feed to the ram and a load indicator enclosed in a weatherproof cabinet. "You just keep the load cells clean and clear from mud or salt and there's little to go wrong with them these days," says Tennick. "They're very reliable."
He's tried other types including those worked off air pressure and hydraulic systems but he reckons the Maywood is about as good as you'll get.
Electrical power comes from the lighting circuit and rather than have the load display unit in the cab it's attached to the offside of the chassis. If the unit has to be repaired the trailer can still be loaded to its correct GCW when pulled by another tractor.
Because Tennick's trailers often use restrictive hopper areas which the driver cannot enter, there's an audible alarm to alert the loader when the trailer's legal payload is reached. The system is accurate to within 200kg. At £1,880 a kit it's not cheap but he reckons it will pay for itself within a year. "It's not just the thought of the courts waving their big sticks," says Tennick. "Many potential clients prefer not to deal with contractors whose trucks don't have onboard systems fitted."
It certainly helped secure a significant contract with FR Kent Fertilisers, which blends and bags fertiliser for national distribution. With 13,000 tonnes of bulk chemicals to shift each year from ICI in Billingham to PB Kent's Darlington plant, correctly weighed loads are vital for many reasons. According to P B Kent's transport manager Mark Landells: "We save £20,000 annually in weighbridge fees and are able to rely on the vehicle systems for our factory supply checks." The fertilisers Tennick carries are low-risk loads but all the the drivers are Hazchem trained to cover every eventuality.
On-board weighers are equally important to Tennick's other contracts shifting grain. "Some of these, he says, are very high grade costing as much as £250 a tonne and go from Lincolnshire to distilleries in Scotland. There are several DOT checkbridges en route so it's essential that we're up to our full potential but no more".
With a full 625-litre tank his latest Volvo FH12 outfit can take just over 24 tonnes and the drivers appreciate the value of the trailer weighers, particularly when they're hauling Coalite from Bolsover where it takes 35 minutes to load, sheet up and get to the weighbridge before setting off for Teesport. NNThen a load of coke's wet there can be three or four tonnes extra on board and going to an area to adjust it, check-weigh and re-sheet wastes valuable time and fuel. Worse still you might tip too much off, so knowing your load's right from the start means you can get away first time.
Pitfalls
There are enough pitfalls in the haulage business today without incurring the wrath of the courts through overloading your wagons so this growing trend of having onboard weighing systems is a welcome one.
Tennick sometimes wonders how he ever managed without them and offers this simple view on those who have yet to recognise their worth: "Risking heavy fines is bad enough but wasting time and fuel adjusting loads to the legal GCW or simply carrying less just to be safe is not only inefficient, it's downright unprofessional".
E by Bryan Jarvis