WEIGHING PROBLEMS
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• An eight-wheel tipper we operate carrying gravel was stopped by police and taken to a full-size weighbridge at a quarry where the driver was told to drive on and off the weighbridge so that the axles were on and off the weighbridge plate.
The police said the first axle, second axle and rear bogie were overweight and we might be prosecuted.
We are not happy about the way the lorry was weighed. What advice can you offer?
• If you are prosecuted, you should defend any overloading charge on the basis that the method of weighing was inaccurate and there is a statutory prohibition on weighing anything not wholly on a weighbridge that is used for trade purposes.
Weighing an eight-wheeler axle-by-axle on a full-size weighbridge is a most unsatisfactory and inaccurate way of obtaining a weight figure because the actions of braking and moving forward transfer weight between the axles. There could also be a question of whether the land on which the other axles rested was on the same level as the weighbridge platform.
The prosecution would also have to show that the weighbridge was accurate and, if the evidence of the weight was produced by computerised equipment, that such equipment was also accurate.
The law which prohibits weighing anything partly on and partly off weighing equipment is the Weighing Equipment (Nonautomatic Weighing Machines) Regulations 1988.
Regulation 26 (as amended in 1992) states that every nonautomatic weighing machine "shall be erected and used in such a manner that, during a weighing operation, the load being weighed is stationary relative to the load receptor and supported only by the load receptor". This means the whole load has to been the weighbridge plate.