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Overweight truck fine-company or driver responsibility?

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JanetD44

Junior Member
What is the name of your state? New York

If a driver of a truck is overweight and issued a ticket, who's responsibe to pay the fine? Isn't it the company's responsiblity to pay the fine since the driver is working on the boss' orders? There is no scale at a rock quarry. Shouldn't the boss have to pay? Thanks
 


You Are Guilty

Senior Member
JanetD44 said:
What is the name of your state? New York

If a driver of a truck is overweight and issued a ticket, who's responsibe to pay the fine? Isn't it the company's responsiblity to pay the fine since the driver is working on the boss' orders? There is no scale at a rock quarry. Shouldn't the boss have to pay? Thanks
Uh, who's truck is it?
 

DRTDEVL

Member
As a "professional", the driver is held to a higher standard... If the load is in doubt, hit the local CAT Scales.

The driver pays the fine. If the boss is nice, the company may reimburse him for the expense.

Most quarries have an "auto-loader" that measures the amount of material in accordance to it's standard weights. If it is wet, the operator of the loader is supposed to change the settings to keep the trucks within weight standards. If one was in use, then what happened? Did the driver knowingly take an overweight load? Was the driver ordered to take the load? Either way, he still pays, because he knew about it and left anyway.

BTW: A seasoned driver can estimate his weight based on the sidewalls of his tires.
 

xylene

Senior Member
DRTDEVL said:
As a "professional", the driver is held to a higher standard... If the load is in doubt, hit the local CAT Scales.

The driver pays the fine. If the boss is nice, the company may reimburse him for the expense.

Most quarries have an "auto-loader" that measures the amount of material in accordance to it's standard weights. If it is wet, the operator of the loader is supposed to change the settings to keep the trucks within weight standards. If one was in use, then what happened? Did the driver knowingly take an overweight load? Was the driver ordered to take the load? Either way, he still pays, because he knew about it and left anyway.

BTW: A seasoned driver can estimate his weight based on the sidewalls of his tires.
Absolutely correct.

Also a driver can use math to estimate weight.

EXAMPLE ONLY Figures and Units are for ease only
.
Say a cubic foot of crushed rock weighs 10lbs

the truck bed has 10,000 cubic feet of capacity volumetrically.

The load capacity of the vehicle is 80,000 lbs.

How many cubic feet can be loaded?

8000.. YAY.

-safety margin of 3% or 300 cubic feet of rock...

77,000 lbs of rock or 7700 cubic feet. or 77% of the trucks capacity by volume.


Plug in your commodity and your trucks values and see how you can deal with weight limits when you only know the volume.
 

justalayman

Senior Member
In most states the driver is responsible for everything to do with his/her truck. If a light is out, it is on the driver. If the brakes aren't adjusted, it's on the driver. If it is overweight, it's on the driver.

The driver has control of the truck and decides to drive it or not. He/she is the one who gets the ticket.

and to this statement:

There is no scale at a rock quarry.
There may not have been a scale at THAT rock quarry but any I have been at (although it is only 3) each had a scale.

The quarry sells the rock by the ton. How do you suppose they know how much to charge the customer?
 

Six Black Roses

Junior Member
This is the reason my brother says he stopped working as a truck driver. He said that whether or not you know about the contents, if you happen to be carrying hazardous chemicals, you're a felon--even if you didn't know that you had hazardous chemicals. That's, of course, just one point. Basically, he went on and on about how the truck driver is never given the benefit of the doubt.
 

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