what is the purpose of weigh scales on the interstate/highways
In: Other
As European, can someone explain this concept? We have scales as well, but you only have to go over them when the police tells you too (at least where I live).
Trucks have a maximum load capacity set by law in order to help keep everyone safe on the roads. Weigh stations on the interstates/highways are used to help enforce those maximum load capacities.
Overloaded trucks are a risk to everyone else on the roads. They take longer to stop and have a much higher risk of brake failure. The extra weight damages roadways and can cause bridges to become damaged and unsafe or even collapse*. And if a truck is loaded past the maximum load capacity of the vehicle itself then it can cause major disruptions to traffic when the truck suffers a potentially catastrophic failure – e.g. a semi-trailer breaking it’s coupling to the semi-trailer truck causing it to go out of control and spread it’s load across the roadway or the main chassis beams of a rigid truck breaking under the stress causing the vehicle to break in two.
*there is a bridge near me that has been damaged over time by heavy semi-trailers driving over it which resulted in traffic being limited to just a single lane over the bridge. Things got to the point where they were forced to replace the bridge causing massive traffic delays on the major highway because even the limited traffic was threatening to collapse the bridge.
Trucks can haul up to 80,000 lbs. the average passenger vehicle weighs about 3,000 lbs.
Think of how much time it takes to stop your car if there is a traffic jam in front of you and you’re going 80 mph. Now imagine trying to stop if your car weighed 26 times as much as it already does.
Overweight truck loads are extremely dangerous.
Truck sizes are fairly uniform, with most being 53 feet long and 100″ tall/wide. To simplify, this is about 3,800 cubic feet of space they can fill.
If you’re carrying something heavy, like water, filling the entire trailer would weigh over 200,000 lbs. This is way too heavy for the road or the brakes but the engine could pull it, so you end up with a massive safety challenge.
The weigh stations make sure the truck stays within a safe limit, which, for water, is closer to 1/3 full.
This is why freight consolidation is a thing. Put simply, freight consolidation is when you mix heavy products with light products to fill the space. It’s very expensive to move products with a trailer, but if you find a trailer that already has 90% of it’s weight capacity with something heavy, like water, you can fill the rest of the truck with a very light product, like popcorn, and everybody wins.
The ground isn’t “rock solid” the way you think it is, it flexes and bends like a stack of paper wobbling
Because of this, trucks and heavy load vehicles make the road flex and crack more. Add that to the fact that trucking companies will try and overload their cargo to maximize their returns
Weigh scales force them to adhere to that weight limit (all states have them) or pay a steep fine
To make sure that trucks aren’t carrying loads that are too heavy. Trucks have gross weight (the weight of the truck and the load combined) restrictions because heavy loads result in more wear and damage on highways and thus increase maintenance costs.
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