The Official C-D Trucking Stories Thread (green light, toll, pickup, emission)
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I loaded a load of maple lumber in Montelo Wisconsin in September of 2002. The load they said weighed 46000 pounds. They did not have a scale at the saw mill I loaded at but I could legally haul 50.000 if it was loaded right.. I had a load guage in my truck and it was good so I just figured I would find a scale up the road and hope for the best.. I made it through two Wisconsin scales and no one said a word so i just went on figuring I was ok.. I got about 60 miles from East St louis Illinois in the middle of the night, Rolling across the scales and got the red light, had to pull around back. They said i was 1200 pounds over gross. The officer in the scale told me to runn across again just to double check, so I did and I was 1200 over.. When i got back inside he had already started writing me a citation.. He told me I could not leave untill i was legal, But I could not unload anything on the ground because that would be littering.. I called my dispacher at home and told him what was going on and all he said was call him tomorrow after i figured out what i was going to do.. after about 20 minutes trying to figure out what I was going to do.. the Officer in the scale house pulled out a map of Illinois, he said if you go this way this will take me around the next scale just out side of St Louis. Then he said you left here legal, and if I had known you were going to have such a good Attitude he would have never written me the citation, and he even thanked me.. I dodged scales the rest of the way to Oklahoma City, my destination.. i unloaded in the evening then went to the Williams Truck stop. Got there about 10:00pm, backed into a parking spot rolled both windows down and shut my truck off and sat there in the nice night air and done paperwork.. as usual at truck stops in big cities I had panhandlers come up to my truck, (only one) he ask me if i needed anything? I said no. A few minutes later he came back, he stepped up on my step and said it again, "do you need anything"? just then my truck rocked as i looked to the right was another young man pointing a pistol at my head through the passengers window. he yelled give me your wallett.. I reached for my wallett he said dont move or ill kill you. I said you asked for my wallett.. I gave it to them and they both ran away.. all I had was 13 dollars...
Whew, Virgil, you got lucky they didn't shoot. Drivers have been killed for less...
Early in my career, I picked up a preloaded trailer with Toyota forklifts in Columbus, IN for delivery in an Atlanta suburb. Eyeballed the tandems and they looked like they were legal according to the BOL. So I pressed on. KY scales gave me the green light so I didn't worry about my weight. Sure enough, the TN scales on I-24 (near Manchester) pulled me around back. I was about 2200# over on my tandems; $214, please! OUCH!
Whew, Virgil, you got lucky they didn't shoot. Drivers have been killed for less...
Early in my career, I picked up a preloaded trailer with Toyota forklifts in Columbus, IN for delivery in an Atlanta suburb. Eyeballed the tandems and they looked like they were legal according to the BOL. So I pressed on. KY scales gave me the green light so I didn't worry about my weight. Sure enough, the TN scales on I-24 (near Manchester) pulled me around back. I was about 2200# over on my tandems; $214, please! OUCH!
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Although I was guilty of being overloaded many times and NOT getting caught I did get caught one time at the last Westbound scale on I-94 in Wisconsin going into Minnesota. I had weighed on a certified public scale in Elgin, Illinois and I was legal on all axles and gross weight with almost full fuel tanks. At the Wisconsin scale they pulled me around back and told me I was over by 1,500# on the trailer. They made me get legal and fined me over $275. The fine was doubled because another driver leased to my company had got caught just a week earlier. This scale guy was some Honcho out of the headquarters office that was training a rookie that day. A real A*****E. My certified ticket didn't mean diddly to him. Another driver and a friend had been traveling with me so we moved a 3,000# chunk of iron from my trailer to his getting me legal. I paid the fine and left. I got another certified weight ticket and the Wisconsin scale was wrong. I turned all the paperwork over to my attorney but he told me it would cost more to fight it than it was worth.
I dropped it but I had written down the name of the jerk that screwed with me. I got my payback about a year later in a totally legal way that cost him a divorce and a few medical bills. That is a story for another day when my office isn't freezing LOL.
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Although I was guilty of being overloaded many times and NOT getting caught I did get caught one time at the last Westbound scale on I-94 in Wisconsin going into Minnesota. I had weighed on a certified public scale in Elgin, Illinois and I was legal on all axles and gross weight with almost full fuel tanks. At the Wisconsin scale they pulled me around back and told me I was over by 1,500# on the trailer. They made me get legal and fined me over $275. The fine was doubled because another driver leased to my company had got caught just a week earlier. This scale guy was some Honcho out of the headquarters office that was training a rookie that day. A real A*****E. My certified ticket didn't mean diddly to him. Another driver and a friend had been traveling with me so we moved a 3,000# chunk of iron from my trailer to his getting me legal. I paid the fine and left. I got another certified weight ticket and the Wisconsin scale was wrong. I turned all the paperwork over to my attorney but he told me it would cost more to fight it than it was worth.
I dropped it but I had written down the name of the jerk that screwed with me. I got my payback about a year later in a totally legal way that cost him a divorce and a few medical bills. That is a story for another day when my office isn't freezing LOL.
GL2
Can't wait for the "rest of the story", GL2! Some years ago, I went through those scales on a Sunday afternoon. Was low on both my 70 and hours for the day. but I had enough to make it to the T/A over there West of Minneapolis. Anyway, the scalemaster was nice enough. He actually seemed bored... He told me corny jokes as he ran my log book "point to point" in his computer to check for speeding...
I never drove a truck but I sure used to hire hundreds of semi's every week when I worked for Domino Sugar back in Baltimore. Our refinery could put out 5+ million pounds per day of sugar products, everything from the little cubes, to 10X powdered, grocery sugars in 5 and 10 pound bags, bakery sugars in 25, 50, or 100 pounds bags, all the way up to tank truck loads of dry bulk or liquid sugar syrup and boxcar, tank car and dry bulk rail cars with up to 200,000 pounds of the stuff. The old Coca Cola plant there on Fort Avenue in the Locust Point area of S. Baltimore, not far from Fort McHenry, used to take upwards of 40 tank trucks a day of syrup for production of Coke syrup that went out to bottling plants all over the region.
We hired truckers for just about all sorts of sugar. Oddest trucks were from O'Boyle Tank Lines, who had food-grade dry bulk trucks that had a small truck motor on them for blowing granulated sugar into six-story high silo's at food processing plants. These "pneumatic discharge" trucks were expensive and a bit rare. Come apple harvest time the canners in PA and WV kept us real busy with dry bulk sugar for use in making apple sauce; we had to keep our plant open around the clock so those trucks could get in during the wee hours for loading, the only time of the year we were open beyond 16 hours a day. Those blower trucks could blow salt, sugar, flour and other edibles into silos.
We had a couple of tank trucks that came in the plant from a local operator in the city of Baltimore named Keim. His trucks looked like crap, until you took a look INSIDE the tank.. These were old tankers, but made of some of the best food-grade stainless steel you ever saw. One day a health department inspector was in the plant; he took one look at Keim's tanker and thought AHA! now I've got me one here that I can fine or declare unsafe. Well, the inspector took one look INSIDE the tank, pulled his head out and proclaimed IT'S BEAUTIFUL!!
Best story I have is one involving a black owner operator (Simpson?) who worked for Riggs Food Express, out of New Bremen, Ohio. They were a reefer outfit, hauled a lot of meats and cheeses east, and used our sugar as a backhaul to get back to the midwest. The highway limit in those days was 73,280 pounds and the reefers were heavy trucks. We liked to put 44,000 pounds of grocery sugar in a truck but reefers were only allowed a tad over 40,000 pounds to keep within the legal weight. Well, Simpson came in one night and instead of cutting the customer's order back to 40,000 pounds, he told the loading dock guys to load in all 44,000 pounds. About 5 miles west of Baltimore, I-95 goes downhill where it crosses the Patapsco River, then back up the other side of the hill. The MD State Police loved to set up their portable scales on the uphill side of that I-95 hill to catch truckers leaving Charm City with an overload. IIRC the story correctly, the dispatcher at Riggs (Victor T.) told me that Simpson had a V-12 Detroit Diesel in his tractor, came over the hill, saw the police scales and laid into his gas pedal so hard that he flew up the other side of the hill so fast the cops thought he was EMPTY and waved him right on by....
Those were the days.....
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Last edited by Mike from back east; 02-21-2011 at 04:04 PM..
Mike,
It is good to see the "good guys" win some of the time LOL. Those scale boys were smart in putting their scales on the uphill part of the road. An example of extreme stupidity was the location of the scales at the bottom of a steep grade in California on I-5 Northbound heading North out of Los Angeles. I believe that hill was called the Grapevine. They were notorious for writing up truckers for safety violations. If you pulled in to their scales with even a puff of smoke coming off of your brakes you got a ticket that might cost several hundred dollars.
I think they closed that scale down when they flipped the open light on and a trucker already partway down the hill lost his brakes trying to pull in to the scales and ran over a couple cars and killed several people. Sometimes weigh station operators are more concerned about writing a ticket than they are in making the roads safer.
Glad you are, Subie2!!! I LOVED Mike from Back East's post and I hope it inspires other members who spend time around trucks without being a driver; I KNOW some of 'em must have some great stories! Mike also reminded me of a couple of B'more stories, but it was a L-O-N-G night and I want to tell 'em when I'm fresh and can think straight...
When I was in our long haul fleet, I loaded and delivered in the Baltimore area a number of times. The TA at Jessup is kinda rough, but it's at least an easy shot imto Baltimore if you arrive early enough to find a parking spot. Anyway, I loaded Heineken beer at a warehouse close to the harbor somewhere. Load was destined for a Lansing, MI distributor. My delivery apppointment was 8 a.m. and it was January. No snow on the roads but it was still a little frosty on the roadway. So there I am, on the four lane divided highway where my receiver is. Sun's in my eyes and I spotted the customer at the last minute. I turned into the driveway and stopped in front of the receiving door. When one of the guys in the warehouse came out to check me in, he said "Thanks for bringing our rock in"! Seems they'd placed a large boulder to make life a little more difficult for truckers with longer trailers and I missed it. (Blocking both of the lanes of the roadway would be the only way to make the right turn into their driveway without dring on thier grass) No damage, fortunately, to the boulder, the lawn or my truck.
GL2, there's still a scale house halfway down Cajon Pass on the I-15 going into San Bernardino, CA. First time I went down it, I was still in my first year of trucking and my Freightshaker didn't have a Jake Brake. I warmed the brakes up pretty good and was REALLY worried when my "LOW AIR PRESSURE" light came on! Other truckers said "Coops are closed; let 'er roll"! So I did and the brakes cooled by the time I got to level ground. Whew!
Last edited by Crew Chief; 03-02-2011 at 11:09 AM..
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Mike also reminded me of a couple of B'more stories, but it was a L-O-N-G night and I want to tell 'em when I'm fresh and can think straight...
