Quote:
Originally Posted by knoxjere
Mr. Adventure, that is what we tried to do and they told us we had to pull all the way forward and that put the TV all on one scale. We told them that is not what we wanted to do and they said the TM was too short to weight the way we wanted to.
Thanks to all for your reponses!
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The two Cat scales I've used have the same configuration, exactly like the video. There are 3 scale platforms, with the rearmost being quite long and the forward two being much shorter. You get in line and pull onto the scale when it's your turn. You stop where you want, with the front axle on the first scale, the rear axle on the second, and the trailer axle on the third. Then you get out to push the button to wake them up. If you're doing a re-weigh, they want the ticket number so they can charge a buck instead of ten. I wouldn't expect them to know enough about where you are on the scale to either help or hurt you, because they're over in the building running a convenience store while you're out there standing on a truck scale entertaining truckers.
Dumb question: were you on the scale backwards (if you did that, the biggest scale would have been last and the scale call station would have been on the right instead of the left as you approached)?
I have to get out of the vehicle and step forward to get to the call station. To get better accuracy, I had to apportion my own weight between the front axle (I had to be on the front scale in order to push the button and talk to them), and the rear axle. In the Toyota Highlander, the driver's center of mass is almost exactly halfway between the front axle and the rear axle. So the adjustment was to subtract half of my weight from the front axle on the scale ticket and add it to the rear in order to get the final numbers I reported here.
But, any scale could do this. In the worst case, weigh in groups of three times, each with with one, two, or three axles on the scale, and then later do the arithmetic to subtract the extra axles from the totals to get three separate axle weights. After you've done this to them a couple times, I'm sure they'll let you stop on their scale anywhere you want as long as you just keep doing it and keep moving things along so that you don't keep interrupting their sales of cigarettes, coffee, and lottery tickets so much with a lot of questions.