How Does a Florida Weigh Station Work?

[Music] [Applause] this way motion scale at Wildwood was built in 1992 the scales that were before here were manned by troopers there was just one scale house it was on the southbound side and they were from what I understand they were not open 24 hours like we are now I mean we that we opened 24 hours a day seven days a week since 1992 prior to that I think they only manned them during the day the amount of overweight vehicles that were coming through here was astronomical we were handwriting cases at the time and I was working the for midnight shift like I am now citations come in a book at 25 we would write 25 a night per person there was so much overweight trucks running down this road after this scale house being closed for so many years there was no regulation on the weight they decided one day that the truck traffic was increasing so fast that they needed to do something about it so they spent years developing what kind of scale house they wanted to put in here because when they started working numbers they had people out here working actual truck numbers that were running down this road and they knew that they needed a type of scale that could weigh 4,000 trucks a day because back in the early 90s three to four thousand was an average day we can weigh as many as six or seven thousand trucks a day now just going north it used to be two-lane when I first started out here in the early 90s and the the ruts in the slow lane were so deep and I was I was telling you I was just driving a small pickup truck back in them days and you wouldn't really notice it it was bad but you didn't notice it until it rained then when those ruts filled up with water that they were very difficult to maneuver a car a big truck yeah you probably do all right but a little car it just it would take you right out of the road anything on the road is going to create damage to it gonna break it down well we say create damage to a road we're not talking about dragging something behind your car your truck you know tearing up the asphalt we're talking about any weight on a surface is going to create wear and tear if you if you have the floor to sue / super hot summers that asphalt gets 150 degrees you got eighty thousand pound trucks running across it it's gonna create a lot of damage to the road and the majority of the damage to the road are done by trucks and that's simply because of their weight simply because of their weight but all vehicles create damage to extent the weigh stations are a deterrent we're here to keep the trucks in compliance with the weight standards the state allows they stay within those standards of the weight that the 22,000 single axle for Florida forty four on a tandem eighty thousand pounds if you're fifty one foot or longer and that's gonna keep our roads are still gonna break down yes but they're not gonna break down at that faster rate to where they need to be repaired in just a short number of years our scales presently are seventy six feet long so we can weigh some awful long trucks they come in three sections we can weigh an ungodly amount of weight I've had vehicles in here over three hundred thousand pounds but they are platforms so we can separate axles and when you pull up we can we can separate your steering your drives and your rear tandem the guys that are real long and they have sometimes eight nine ten eleven axles they like coming into these type of scales because we can weigh them number one accurately we know what we're doing here we're not a cat scale we've hit a lot of drivers in here that would get weight on a cast scale and they'll drop their last axle off and they'll think they're okay and they come in here with a Casio ticket and they're 15,000 pounds lighter than we got them on set okay what they're gonna do is they're gonna enter the on ramp they're gonna see a sign it says maintain 45 miles an hour and you want to maintain your 45 miles now if there's one thing that will plug the system up quick is dropping your speed do not slow down or speed up that it will bring you in for either one of those two those parameters on the speed sensor are set low and high you'll see these two little white spots right here once you cross that way a motion scale by the time your front axle hitting that scale and your last rear axle hitting that scale we know everything about you it will tell us your total length distance between your actuals the weight of each axle how long you are how wide you are how tall you are the only thing we don't know is your first name we know everything about you before you even come in here now if all that is is good if all those dimensions are correct and all those weights are correct then that system is just going to guide you right through the scales you're gonna be gone you'll shoot all the way out right past the scale here and right back out on the interstate so you'll drop down to 45 miles an hour for about approximately 20 seconds that's what it takes you to run through the scale house about a mile and a half if you if you do set off one of the predetermined weights in the computer the computer has different weights it'll bring you in at say example it might be set at seventy-six thousand pounds so anything over seventy six thousand will come in and when it brings you in it'll slide you down this Lane here and then you'll get to a point here and it'll direct you to you the scale one or scale two and you just follow it onto the scale make sure you make a complete stop prior to coming up on a scale and then pull up on a scale wait for the inspector to give you a green light if you don't get a green light and a reasonable amount of time please don't beep your horn could be something wrong with the weights could be we get a lot of fuel trucks in here and their weight is constantly shifting and we can't get we don't know what they weigh until they lock in so depending on what you're hauling just wait for the green light once you get the green light you're free to go it's very important to maintain at 45 miles an hour and a hundred foot intervals if you're not maintaining 100 foot intervals how do you know you're reading your arrow and not that guy in front of you the virtual dimension monitor is talking to the way in motion monitor because it's given you these dimensions when the computer directs the vehicle into the scales because of a violation of either weight or dimension then this information is transferred to that computer and all that just like that yeah it it actually measures your length height and width using Lee every vehicle that comes in is on there if we click on the picture of the vehicle for instance there's one in the center far left that's a car hauler we can determine exactly where that vehicle is over height so when we go out there with our manual for height stick we know exactly where we have to go we don't have to just sit there and try to eyeball which car is the highest one we the arrows are telling you where the high points are at or the wide points or where it's too long I had a case in the middle of the night ten o'clock last week the guy was hauling palm trees now looking out this window and it's very dark out you can't see a lot though I depend on my monitors to see and I I sawed off my monitor told me that he was 9 9 1/2 foot wide I couldn't see that from in here when I went out and I looked at one side down his truck he had a root ball sticking out that far he was not legal to be on a road after dark so here it is 10 o'clock at night you know so that's the reason we shut him down you know of course we we have to issue a citation for it and then that's going to a whole new different realm it's all about safety you know it's all about if you are over dimension you've got to have the required safety stuff on the vehicle you know to tell everybody out there because we're we're protecting the motoring public as funny as it may sound and kind of corny that's what we're doing you know the d-o-t reader is a system that will scan each and every d-o-t number in a matter of seconds it will look to see if that d-o-t number appears on what we call a hot list a hot list is a list of d-o-t numbers that have unpaid penalties owed to the state of florida for over 30 days the procedure is to pull the vehicle in a parking lot that's our policy it's not statute it's policy that we tell the driver that you know he has outstanding penalties we'll give them a paper over here that lists actually lists the DLT numbers the citation numbers the dollar amounts the dates were issued and we'll give that to the driver and tell called company and they could pay those fine when they pay those fines will confirm that they're paid and then we'll release the vehicle okay so if we want to talk about pre pass it's a system where you pay a monthly fee to bypass the scale now the whole intent of that system is to alleviate some of the heavy heavy traffic that we have I said we can weigh up to 7,000 trucks a day when we have one of those days this scale house gets plugged up and it gets plugged up quick you have a little transponder in your window and it shows a green light or a red light so you run under that little reader a mile down before the it's just before the open sign gives you a green light it tells you if you're okay you can go right down the interstate don't come in gives you a red light you have to come in so there's a lot of trucks that buy it and the system is good if it's used correctly if you're if you're a mothball hauler a cotton ball hauler you don't haul any weight styrofoam we see it all the time pallets you know hey whatever you might have that you just never get overweight that's the system you need to be on because you'll never have to go into a scale house it does have a 10% pulling rate so 10% of the time you will get pulled in but that's the system was designed for light trucks unfortunately a lot of the vehicles that tend to run heavy also buy in the free pass so here this vehicle now this one just came in he's overweight it's weighing him of seventy nine thousand seven hundred pounds he's going to come in here he is right here he went to the swim sort split right here he didn't get to bypass Lane because he's heavy so he's got to come in so he's gonna come in one of these lights are gonna light up here here he comes even in a fog you can watch these trucks come down because there he is right there you can see him out there and yet on the lane coming in and the computer directed hitting a scale number two so he's gonna come up right here and he's gonna pull up right here and come up on a scale this screen tells us a lot of stuff here this this number right here twenty eight fifty that's that's the twenty eight that's two thousand eight hundred fiftieth truck that came in today and here's the time he's a class nine vehicle Reid was 34 miles an hour's gross weight 79 thousand seven hundred pounds we have a usdot number reader down there and evidently it didn't read his d-o-t numbers as lengths 59 6 with his 8:1 height 11 foot and he came in because he was gross overweight now remember I told you about their certain parameters in the computer where these vehicles will come in at a certain weight I'm gonna say 76 thousand pounds so anything over 76 thousand pounds if he hits that number he's going to come in so this vehicle had to come in because he the whim weighed him at 79 thousand seven hundred pounds his actual weight is 79 thousand seven hundred and sixty pounds now that's pretty doggone close here's this steer axle weight he can do he can do 22 on a steer 44 on a tandem and he's 33 960 and 33 900 so his weights are perfect axles growth weights under 80,000 he's 51 point 7 feet long so he could haul that weight his bridge weights are good first three axles 17 feet 45 thousand is good to go and 39 foot in her bridge 67 thousand I know that 39 foot in a bridge he can do 68 thousand so this guy is knows what he's doing he's got it all right where he needs to be and all I'm going to do here is push that little exit button get my green light [Applause] but let's say we got a 10 axle or six axle truck a right-click accumulate axles this little box is gonna show up so I'm gonna I'm gonna click on his steers I want to click on his drivers I'm going to click on his rear tandem it's recording the weights up here exactly like you see them here now I'm going to tell the driver I'm going to tell the driver to please pull up and put your third fourth and fifth sets of axles on scales one two and three normally I've got a partner in here one of us will go outside and direct the driver to put those three axles on those platforms again so let's say that this is axle number four I'm gonna click that one again and this is the next set of axles so I'll click that one again and that's the next set so there's all your sets of axles he's got six sets of axles and we just recorded every one of the weights and all we would do right here tells you that total weight would come to 159 100 we'd print a ticket BAM the permit office when they issue that permit they'd only give them a certain amount of weight per axle so you have to break it down it might tell you he can do 44 on a tandem maybe he can do 50 on a 10mm you can do 60 whatever but you take those weights and look at his permit make sure he can do all that if you can do all that the weight issue and he's and the permit says that he must have 11 sets of axles whatever he's in compliance that's all good now we got the length aspect that's the dimension part so now now we're thinking okay how long is it we'll go out there and depending on what the permit says and what we have in our hand as far as our weights and measures will determine whether we need to measure it now based on looking at his permit and looking at our weight slips that's going to tell us whether we need to do more work where we need to you know maybe measure axle space things or maybe measure a total external bridge length or maybe we need to maybe it's permits only for 10-foot wide and we think he's 12 foot wide we might have to measure is with once we get out there and we start looking then we'll find out we're not looking for a violation I want to get this straight I suppose we have people out here in these positions that do that I'm not when I go out there I'm not looking for a violation okay I'm looking at whether the guy is legal whether his permit and sometimes it's a permit office mistake we can't count the number ties we have had called a permit office and said hey look this guy says that he ordered a permit for 15 and you only gave a permit for 14 now most people will just start writing that ticket BAM well your 15 permit only says 14 got you if it's the day shift and you can call the permit office you can ask them hey you tell who you are and they'll get when you tell them you're an inspector out here looking at a permit they'll get with you they're on you right now so you tell them I got this permit driver city applied for 15 feet he's only got 14 hours permit what do you say let me look up the application yep he requested 15 feet I'm not gonna write him a ticket am i that's what he requests because his permit says that he requested that it's the permit office fault right so what would do park the driver hey sorry about that but they have to redo your permit it's not gonna cost you nothing we're not going to issue a citation now we're gonna cost you nothing the permit officer issue another permit for 15 they'll fax it here and you'll be on your way a lot of people will just write it and say tough luck things right we would do it wait and dimension is not the only thing we enforce in this scale house okay there's a there's a lot of other things while you're on that scale even the empty trucks the the just the cab's got to have fuel stickers I'm gonna look and make sure you got a good tag I'm gonna look at if you got a temporary in the window I want to come out and look at that temporary there's lots of other things we look at so it's not just wait certain scale houses and enforce this more than I enforce that and it's it's weird we don't all do things the same way and we've always complained about that you know why we don't but we all get we kind of get into our own little pattern here we work by ourselves a lot and we kind of say okay well you know I mean I have my own - now kingpins for example My partner and I have a have an understanding we give the drivers I was always taught to always give the driver to benefit a doubt always that's the way I was taught that's the way I teach people so a kingpin setting 41 feet right we don't ride him till he hit 43 I give him two more feet and I figure it this way I not only give the driver to benefit a doubt I take into consideration maybe I didn't measure it quite right so I know it can't be two feet off so 43 is a magic number so we give you that little bit of extra gives you a little bit you know to play with and if you hit 43 though you're toast you know we got to do something about it overhang car haulers are restricted to if you've got a front load overhang and you see the car haulers there the car hangs over the front and then to hang out the back well they can only do a maximum of three out the front six out the back I'm not gonna write a guy for six or seven inches of overhang but if he hits a foot it's got to be a bonafide foot now then I get them so we give them that little bit of extra and I tell the drivers that I look I don't hit you up after three inches like the law says I can do I give you that little bit of extra so don't be mad at me when you come in here a whole foot over you know and I decide I'm going to do something so but that's the way I was taught give them that little bit of extra not everybody does that run a little bit overweight if you would pulling that rely on your right bring us in your tractor and your trailer registration driver's license the vehicle was sixteen hundred pounds overweight I asked the driver to pull in a parking lot bringing his paperwork at that time we didn't know he already had a citation issued to him so he'll park he'll come in to scale house and he'll have his little ticket in his little envelope you know that's the old telltale sign he know he's already been issued one it once issued a weight ticket you can resume lots of guys will come in here and they will be pounds overweight and they'll and they'll tell us hey you know I've got a quarter tank of fuel I've got it you can add fuel the only problem is when you leave Florida all that extra weight you put on it's gonna apply to the next state so you're good in Florida but you're not gonna be good somewhere else every state has their own government has their own legislature and they want to make their own laws the drivers are coming here and they'll say why is Georgia this and Florida's that why is Utah this and Jordan because that's our government that's your system that's that they make their laws based on how they want to run it in their state so that's the way everything goes with with pre pass and drive wise and and all the programs that we've got that vehicles you know they they can there's all kinds of way to slip by us it's hard to notice you've got so many trucks so much truck traffic so much car traffic it's hard to notice whether somebody's out there that's supposed to be or not I won't tell you this ninety-eight percent other drivers are just honest guys making a living like you and I are doing and they're coming in they found little law you know just like you and I do you know drive the speed limits we're going in and us we go in the weigh stations we follow the speed limit signs we do we try to do everything right you know we go on green and we stop on red and you know we do everything right and ninety-eight percent of them are doing that so you know god bless the guys that are running let them go they will get caught one day and you know something and we've had it happen here before maybe not the same instance running the coupes but a violation where the driver will blatantly say I do this every week and I've been doing it for 10 years and you only got me once yeah but we got you if there's a trooper on duty here and we see a truck out on the interstate and he is supposed to be in here that trooper will run him down if he just if he decides that that the vehicle ran by the scale on purpose that's gonna cost him a thousand dollars that's the in statute that's that that's a that's a that's a money amount that state legislature said to issue them ticket for $1,000 I will say that that doesn't end there because when the trooper writes your ticket goes on your driver's license okay there's points I don't know how many because we don't do that but you ask a trooper he'll tell you so it's not a good idea to do that but if you but I've had a lot of drivers in the past and I've been on her 22 years so I have to have drivers that told me they pulled over on the interstate in a safety lane over here and walk across the ditch and into this chaos and say I couldn't get over I was on a cell phone and I was doing this I was doing that and I got busy and I saw the sign and I tried to move over and then a four-wheeler wouldn't let me in so I kind of look at that like this if you went through all the trouble to stop right here and come in you know I was asking to bring in their bills if I see them come and bring me your bills if he's weighing 80,000 pounds I'm gonna take his paperwork and I want to tell him to go down the next exit get off turn left turn left again go south go down to that exit turn around left left come right over here and come here pick your paperwork up I had a guy in here one night out of Alabama nice guy 600 pounds overweight driving a piece of crap just driving a piece of crap a little cab over beat up pulled in nice guy I said hey man see just a little bit overweight tonight you know 600 pounds he goes oh okay you're real mild-mannered guy you know you know he says well how much is that gonna cost me I saw a 30 bucks you know okay all right and that's where we're taking money back then you know but cash money he said got to looking at his registration is expired well that changes the whole ball well you got an expired registration that's bad bad bad a thirty dollar fine turned into a two thousand dollar fine when I told him that I thought the guy's gonna start crying I thought oh man you know hate to do these I hate to do these then he says to me would you mind if I go on the truck and get my wife I said why you know he said well she I thought he was I thought he was telling me a story I was rolling up my pant leg because the crap was getting deep he told me he says I got her with me said normally travel with her but she just had brain surgery I'm thinking boy this guy's good this guy's good man he's got John Wayne in him you know because he's he's giving me the bill and uh I said okay I said brain surgery says yeah and she says I can't leave her for very long because she has seizures that's okay you can bring her in here she wants oh he did brought her in nice lady real quiet mild-mannered sat down in a chair and I started telling him what it was going to cost them of course she he got upset she got upset she got so upset he said I gotta be careful cuz she has seizures she gets she can't get excited you know I'm thinking I'm still thinking this guy's telling me a story he told me they he said we're living in this truck had to sell my house to pay for the surgery we're living on that truck and he says I'm just trying to make a living and I'm thinking jeez so she starts crying then she starts shaking then she falls on the floor and then he tells me help me hold her down she's having a seizure so I got her legs he's got her head because it's a concrete floor like this she's jumping around like a fish out of water and we're holding her down and I'm the only one working that day trucks are going by you know no one's waiting trucks cuz I'm holding this late she's bouncing around like a hay is unreal so after about 15 minutes of that she starts settling down she starts shaking and carrying on and now if this was an act my god I'm gonna give him an Oscar I ain't kidding you after all that got her back in the chair half hour went by her longer and I got to thinking I said I can't do this you know I said look you got 30 bucks on you yep I said I'll write the ticket for the 600 pounds and I must have just overlooked that expired registration and I said please don't go through no more scales man because somebody else is gonna bust your ass I swear to God don't I said whatever you have to do to get back to Alabama do it but don't go through another set scales you know man I told her I could write a book man I ain't kidding you stuff like that happens every day out here you know I mean not so much the last few years but the first ten or fifteen years out here it was a circus it was one thing after another in fact I worked with a young black kid today was Richard Jones he deemed me the magnet he called me a magnet I said why he called me the magnet he said because everything happens when I'm working with you he said nothing's crap happens he says it only happens and I mean I mean we've had we've had hookers in here I mean oh my god that just keeps going on and on and on they look we're in the middle of nowhere where'd she come from hidden drivin she also pops through the back door hi guys how's it going no car love look I told my buddy I said is there a truck out there no truck no car nothing on the interstate where you come from and she just started a conversation you know hi how's it going we're thinking I said Richard which what she wants so I don't know oh boy was this when you guys are still taking money I don't remember that might be but the real driver is what I call real drivers know that we're not here to be a pain in their butt we're here to do a job now I granted there are people out here that probably are a pain in the butt but trust me there's for every one of us there's one of them okay so we get it on both ends - we get some pretty nasty drivers in here most of the time that's not true most of the time we get a lot of good with most of the drivers are great explain the law in detail and they understand you have no problems with them you're gonna get a couple of them that still don't disagree but you know that's it is what it is I treat the drivers like they treat me okay you come in here you get a great attitude I got a great attitude I'm gonna I'm still going to give you the fine I can't get past that I'm still gonna give you a citation but I could be nice about it if you could be nice about it and we can get business done and get it out of way there's a drivers restroom in the driver's room and that's specifically for drivers there's what we call a comfort station in the back that has next to the inspection barn there are three restrooms male-female handicap the four wheelers can use it to you know if you got to make a potty stop and I mean we're ten miles in between exits so I mean you missed two golden opportunities one of the main things I'd like to stress is that at any Florida scale the drivers can park overnight free okay ain't gonna cost you nothing and let me put this rumor to rest I wondered one time why we used to lie I have back parking lot up at night I used to be so many trucks out there that you couldn't breathe because of the diesel fumes I'm not kidding you and all of a sudden they disappeared and I started asking drivers why they're not parking back there anymore at night why do you want to go to a truck stop and pay when you can park here for nothing because we don't want to get a deal T inspection in the morning we wake up I can tell that's not gonna happen our officers were specifically told don't you go in that rear parking lot in the morning and start knocking on doors don't do it so that I can't say would never happen at another scale house I can't guarantee that because I only work here but it won't happen here my forte is in training and education I love doing those two things I find myself doing a lot of it doing this the sad part of the job is having to actually issue that citation I've been here a long time threatening acquittal off a lot of times in the last 22 years trust me and now I'm in you know Florida drop program so I'm within five years of retirements if you interviewed anybody else out here and they heard me tell you that I've enjoyed this job for 22 years I don't think I could stop from laughing [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Big Rig Videos

Views: 993,994

Keywords: peterbilt, big rig, largecars, super rigs, custom rigs, custom trucks, trucker, trucking, truck show, lowboy, kenworth W900, W900, mack, cummins, chrome shop mafia, semi truck videos, peterbilt videos, big rig videos, camionneur, camion, peterbilt 379, Heavy Hauler, haulage, tonnage, over size, rolling cb interview, chris fiffie, FDOT, Department of Transportation, Weigh Station, Chicken Coop, Truck Driver (Profession), Florida (US State)

Id: dkG4H2ZS_TE

Length: 34min 18sec (2058 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 07 2015