Ministry starts test weighing in preparation for plating enforcement
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BY H. BRIAN COTTEE
ST weighing started on Monday at the first of four special sites which the Ministry of Transport has set up to survey axle loadings and running weights of commercial vehicles and collect general data on weighing procedures in readiness for the eventual enforcement of plating among all ages of goods vehicles.
These weighing machines are the property of the Ministry of Transport and not of the local weights and measures departments.
Prime object of the operation is to see how far axle loads and gross weights of existing, and mainly "pre-plating", goods vehicles, conform with manufacturers' recommendations. This may be helpful to the Ministry in building up the master list of weights at which different models will be plated when they first attend for test at the Government testing stations from 1968 onwards.
The Western Avenue site has one drawback —it is near a roundabout on this dual-carriageway road, and on Monday quite a few vehicles that the police would have liked to pull in for weighing simply could not safely be waved across the traffic streams and into the layby.
Although only one axle or one bogie can be weighed at a time, the level site and flush platform should ensure that aggregated axle weights provide a correct gross weight figure for the vehicle. Different types of weighing unit are to be used at each site, to provide comparisons.