Overweight Lorries

[grumpyscot]

Interesting article in the press today - cannot believe that some trucks are overloaded to almost twice the permitted weight. At least we now know what creates the potholes!

http://www.scotsman.com/news/transport/lorry-traps...

[Jimmy Recard]

85 tonnes? What are they carrying? Lead?

[TooMany2cvs]

grumpyscot said:

Interesting article in the press today - cannot believe that some trucks are overloaded to almost twice the permitted weight. At least we now know what creates the potholes!

http://www.scotsman.com/news/transport/lorry-traps...

There ought to be a law against it!

[grumpy52]

I have seen several but none at 85t .
I saw a fridge trailer which would normally take a load of about 20t loaded with 10 ×2t pallets of stainless cord for tyres then 10 x1t pallets of ham .. The trailer actually looked to be bowed going down the road .
Also saw an open trailer of bags of road salt that had been left uncovered in the rain .
It sank into a concrete runway when uncoupled and left on blocks

[Digby]

Nothing new. These sensors have been dotted around for a few years now.

Reading on another forum, a driver there suggested the 85+ ton warning is for abnormal loads, so perfectly legal.

Journalistic rubbish, then?

[crossy67]

We live right next to a quiet country road. We get quite a few lorries passing daily but every now and again we get some that shake the house like hell, really scary the 1st couple of times. I've often wondered if they are over loaded but have always thought it was a thing of the past. Maybe not so much.

[chilistrucker]

Digby said:

Nothing new. These sensors have been dotted around for a few years now.

Reading on another forum, a driver there suggested the 85+ ton warning is for abnormal loads, so perfectly legal.

Journalistic rubbish, then?

I think you're right.

I'm with Grumpy, over the years I've seen overweight wagons but never anything that is plated at 40 tonnes, weighing in at 80.
I'm led to believe there has been a weight pad on the M25 for years, but can't confirm if that's true. I was told its at the top of Reigate hill on the clockwise side, which makes sense as VOSA/DVSA or what ever they call themselves these days are regularly plotted up there waiting for passing traffic, which they can then pull off at J9 should anything spark their interest.

[caelite]

crossy67 said:

I've often wondered if they are over loaded but have always thought it was a thing of the past. Maybe not so much.

Nah, for the most part it is not really a safety issue so there has never really been a 'crackdown'. With the fines VOSA have in place I very much believe the revenue stream they gain from the overloaded trucks is more than sufficient to cover any damage they are doing to our roads. Particularly when you take into consideration the about of 3.5ton platted vans which they catch every day running 5-6ton. I really doubt it would be fiscally advantageous to really crack down on it enough for people to think twice.

Most of the lorries you see on our roads nowadays are perfectly capable of hauling and braking safely with 80tons GTW (like they do in some parts of Europe). Vans are the same, the dual wheeled vans that you often see running overloaded are really capable of 5-6ton GVW safely however are downplated in the dealership for tax and licence reasons.

Personally havn't seen many overloaded trucks, certainly not to the extent mentioned in the article. I have seen one of our Transit which got tugged at a hair over 10ton GTW with an Willams tri axle trailer on the back (MAM of just under 7 ton train weight of course). Come to think of it the lad got proper shafted because he hadn't brought his tachocard and he was a good 10 miles out of our O licence range too. Many hundreds of £s changed hands over that.


EDIT: Sorry lads, 10 ton transit was less than 10 ton, mentioned it in work today, the fine was only for 30% over so it must have been 8-9ton GTW. The dualy chassis vans actually hold the weight well, a decent tri-axle you can load up a fair whack before it looks 'unsafe', seen an overloaded single wheel transit panel van though and it looked comical. We go through light vehicles at a rate of knots from shagged suspension and drivetrain components, our trucks we look after though (mainly old euro 3/4 kit, even got an old FH10 twin drive, twin steer flatbed floating about)

Edited by caelite on Tuesday 31st January 20:11

[chilistrucker]

10 tonne on a tranny and trailer

caelite, sadly I have no idea as not very mechanically minded, I just used to drive them.
Would most modern day trucks gearboxes and clutches stand up long term at 70-80 tonne weights?
I know when we ran Sweden and Norway we used to see the bigger setups they had out there, I think it was 25m overall length at 60 tonnes. I know they liked the bigger powered Volvos and Scanias, normally 500+ upto the 700/750 but I did often wonder if that was on a standard euro type spec gearbox/clutch?

All the Dafs we had on the tours were the lowly 410's, they seemed to cope pretty well and we ran some punishing roads and hills on a regular basis, but at the start of a tour every driver was trying to avoid the heavier loads.
A load of truss on a tour may have weighed in around 5 tonne, (23 tonnes G.V.W) a load of rigging may have seen you at 35-40 tonne G.V.W which took a lot longer in a 410 Daf to get up the mountains than a load of truss.

[caelite]

chilistrucker said:

10 tonne on a tranny and trailer

caelite, sadly I have no idea as not very mechanically minded, I just used to drive them.
Would most modern day trucks gearboxes and clutches stand up long term at 70-80 tonne weights?
I know when we ran Sweden and Norway we used to see the bigger setups they had out there, I think it was 25m overall length at 60 tonnes. I know they liked the bigger powered Volvos and Scanias, normally 500+ upto the 700/750 but I did often wonder if that was on a standard euro type spec gearbox/clutch?

All the Dafs we had on the tours were the lowly 410's, they seemed to cope pretty well and we ran some punishing roads and hills on a regular basis, but at the start of a tour every driver was trying to avoid the heavier loads.
A load of truss on a tour may have weighed in around 5 tonne, (23 tonnes G.V.W) a load of rigging may have seen you at 35-40 tonne G.V.W which took a lot longer in a 410 Daf to get up the mountains than a load of truss.

We have a Merc Aroc LWB 580bhp twin drive plated for 80ton, I believe it has the same power shift transmission and motor as a 44tonner but I do know we have an uprated hydraulic motor and toughened 5th wheel, the former is mainly because we run a hiab on it whilst running standard loads, recently we have been running wind turbine equipment up and down the A9. Turbine nacelles coming in at 55ton each needing a six axle low loader with rear steer, blades coming in at 40ton using a specialised semi rigid trailer.

I love watching the trucks, don't drive them myself though. The vans I can say for sure, the only real difference mechanically between a rwb chassis transit rated for 3.5ton gvw and 5ton gvw on a dually rear is the plate that the dealer put on it, 3.5tonners are substantially cheaper to tax, only take yearly Mot's, only require tachos when towing and aren't limited by the limitations of your O licence. We overload ours far to often though I will admit, our only saving grace is that we tend to operate rurally so are rarely caught.

Had a fun drive myself recently, Ford ranger 3.2l with the same Williams tri axle on it, 800kg trailer, 4ton geny on the trailer, 200l of diesel in the truck beds with about 100kg of equipment, all needing driven up an unpaved forestry track

[chilistrucker]

Thanks for the info, and sod that
Did a bit with a LWB Defender pulling a 3 axle trailer with a 2.5 tonne cherry picker on, thought that was entertaining enough. Was a bh in London with the Landy turning circle.

[caelite]

chilistrucker said:

Thanks for the info, and sod that
Did a bit with a LWB Defender pulling a 3 axle trailer with a 2.5 tonne cherry picker on, thought that was entertaining enough. Was a bh in London with the Landy turning circle.

Haha, last time I was in London was '13 or so in my pals early 90s LDV convoy with a reasonably sized dual axle car trailer, picked up 4 bikes and drove all the way back to Glasgow . Would've been tolerable if it wasn't for the fact the van was shaking itself to pieces, had the heaviest clutch in the world and one of those God awful gutless N/A diesels with an unladen v max of about 65. Was being passed by the bloody wagons laden on the way back .

[powerstroke]

caelite said:

We have a Merc Aroc LWB 580bhp twin drive plated for 80ton, I believe it has the same power shift transmission and motor as a 44tonner but I do know we have an uprated hydraulic motor and toughened 5th wheel, the former is mainly because we run a hiab on it whilst running standard loads, recently we have been running wind turbine equipment up and down the A9. Turbine nacelles coming in at 55ton each needing a six axle low loader with rear steer, blades coming in at 40ton using a specialised semi rigid trailer.

I love watching the trucks, don't drive them myself though. The vans I can say for sure, the only real difference mechanically between a rwb chassis transit rated for 3.5ton gvw and 5ton gvw on a dually rear is the plate that the dealer put on it, 3.5tonners are substantially cheaper to tax, only take yearly Mot's, only require tachos when towing and aren't limited by the limitations of your O licence. We overload ours far to often though I will admit, our only saving grace is that we tend to operate rurally so are rarely caught.

Had a fun drive myself recently, Ford ranger 3.2l with the same Williams tri axle on it, 800kg trailer, 4ton geny on the trailer, 200l of diesel in the truck beds with about 100kg of equipment, all needing driven up an unpaved forestry track

Green energy !!!! Is there anything worse for the envronment ???

[R0G]

I reckon its some of the drivers who might be overweight but the lorries are overloaded !

[brrapp]

chilistrucker said:

10 tonne on a tranny and trailer

Back in my misspent youth, we didn't use Transits as they showed any excess weight too easily. As soon as they were over at all, they went right down on the springs. A Bedford CF pickup was far better (and the vehicle of choice for scrapmen and s ). My brother got stopped with a three tons of topsoil on the back of his 35cwt CF pickup and four tons in the trailer, only caught because he stopped to let the clutch cool down, it didn't look overloaded at all.

editted to add :- and that was only a 2.0 litre 'slant 4' petrol engine

Edited by brrapp on Tuesday 31st January 10:27

[grumpy52]

Many years ago you knew a transit was overloaded when the handbrake cable rubbed on the propshaft .
When stock and banger racing I used to run a sliding door CF bedford that started life as a 1600 with a floor change three speed .
That soon had a 2.3 and a four speed plus overdrive towing a four wheel trailer with usually a big rover or jag on board add about a ton of spares tools water and fuel .
Never stopped for checks ,probably because with the original axel ratio it would pull like a train but only do 75 flat out in overdrive top ..
Most independent small recovery trucks will be running overloaded with anything bigger than a hatchback onboard. All those transit types with another transit on the back will be overloaded unless they have been upgraded and running a tacho .
We have a large salvage auction place nearby and VOSA soon cottoned on to the easy pickings .

[PorkFan]

It's ok though, he was only going 5 miles or so

[grumpy52]

PorkFan said:

It's ok though, he was only going 5 miles or so

The usual is a transit with a loaded transit luton or pickup on the back .
Many only have one 2t ratchet holding a 3t+ load .
They wonder why they get pulled .

[scorcher]

We had a foreigner turn up at work with a standard tri axle trailer and single axled unit with a load of glass on. They were small dumpy bottles and were about 900kgs per pallet.Normally they would turn up with a single layer of 26 pallets. This one turned up with a double layer of bottles. He did try to explain that they were heavy. Must have been 60 odd tons.