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Size can be deceptive
Page 66
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...so it pays to watch your weight!
It's all too easy to pile on those extra pounds so keep an eye on your weight. Having recently visited a quarry with a weighbridge I was amazed at how difficult it Is to estimate a load's weight just by looking at it.
I was parked up behind a 3.5-tanner that was on the weighbridge taking on aggregate. The vehicle was leaning over to the left slightly but the load looked pretty small -you could only just see a mound of earth popping out from the side but the whole vehicle weighed well over four tonnes.
I'm not sure whether any was taken off or not as I was concerned with my own load, but it did make me think about how many overloaded vehicles must be running around on the country's roads overweight.
in a recent news story a guy had hired a van to help his daughter move house and was later prosecuted for driving an overloaded van. I have frequently moved house and helped other people move; not once did I think about the weight of my load before I moved into this industry. You just load on boxes and furniture until the van is full. And people often assume that the bigger the van is, the bigger the load it can take. This may be true in size, but in terms of weight it is often the other way round.
Perhaps there is no easy solution to this -after all, who would be looking to solve a problem that is not obviously apparent? Weight sensors in vans would most likely add cost, and would probably be ignored a lot of the time.