That was HEAVY!!!!!

JD Seller

Well-known Member
A very good friend was trying to get his corn done yesterday and was out of room, bins and wagons all full. So I took one of the semis over for him to fill directly out of the field. HE has an older MF 860 that he just bought this year. HE always had a MF 550 up until now. He is just getting used to everything being different. One of them being he now has a larger grain tank on this combine. Then you add in me taking the "new" trailer which has 84 inch sides rather than 72 inch sides like we always used to have. He had the trailer loaded level full. HE had the corn contracted with an ethanol plant that I could get to without getting off of country gravel roads other then the last half mile. So I drove slow and careful. Crossed the scales weighing 109,680 lbs. gross, 1360 bushels of corn. The truck is legal to 96K but he kind of missed that. LOL

There are two good parts of this. First he got done with his corn crop. Second, I did not encounter any DOT officials on the trip. LOL Almost 7 ton over would not have been a fun ticket.
 
Great job to have finished up! Yes that would be a dandy fine :( he'd find quite a difference in combines,we still run a 550 for barley and a neighbour has an 860,almost twice the size they were a monster in their day.
 
Done that a couple times myself JD. My brother crammed all of it on one trailer since it was the last field we had, and didn't want to make another haul of one or two hundred bushels, so he heaped the semi up. Mucho overloaded. I told him if he wanted to load it like that, he could haul it like that, I only know one of the local DOT offficers, and don't need to know any more. At .50 or a dollar a pound, whichever they feel like, it adds up pretty quick. They nail and ticket a lot of southern drivers up here that don't even know what "frost laws" are. Usually the DOT officers tell them they need to check the laws where they are going. Well, with as easy as all of the laws are defined in every place you go (NOT), you'd have a stack of encyclopedias to carry with you to check over, and hope you decipher the same way the person that wrote it did.
 
JD only 109?? Try hauling logs/wood and some of the equipment that goes with it 109 would be a light load!!!
 
JD I would not be posting this info. I think Herberger can go to the Elevator and demand to see scale tickets, then right you the ticket for over weight. Elevator will have your truck# ETC. Hope I am wrong about this.
 
Worked for a farmer for a while...

He finished a field of soybeans one Sunday. Monday morning I got to take it to the elevator, He said to take my time as it was a "bit" heavy. I don't think I ever got up to the speed limit and it was straight highway 15 miles into town. 79,900 net!

Same truck, we had put one load of wheat into a bin for seed. Came into the farm on prairie trails so no problem there. Mid winter loaded it back out to go to the seed plant, had to split weigh 113,000 on 5 axles. It adds up if you aren't paying attention.
 
I saw a weigh ticket from the paper mill scales one time that was 118,000, a big load of green balsam! All behind a Chevy with a 427 gasser! and it liked gas!
 
dzc3: I really doubt he would be able to tell where or who this happened from this post. Also I did not say I hauled it to the closest ethanol plant. I did not take it to the closest one. That leaves him several choices.

Also many of the grain wagons/trains hauled behind tractors are grossing over 120K. Local fellow hauls all his corn with two 750 bushel wagons behind his tractor. He regularly goes over 140K gross loaded weight. I have followed him through the line. He is way over the legal axle limit but I have never seen a farmer with a tractor stopped.
 
Jocco
In Mn we call them Spring Load Restrictions. In our area the time period varies, southern areas usually starts in early March, can last up to late May in northern areas. It is that time that the frozen road bed is starting to thaw, between winter frozen & summer dried out. Weight limits during this time are reduced, depending on the moisture condition in the road bed & the type of surface material. Subject to change as weather warms up & amount of snow melt/ rain fall.
I know, my explanation is clear as mud, but it covers the ground.

Willie
 
(quoted from post at 18:04:56 12/02/16) A very good friend was trying to get his corn done yesterday and was out of room, bins and wagons all full. So I took one of the semis over for him to fill directly out of the field. HE has an older MF 860 that he just bought this year. HE always had a MF 550 up until now. He is just getting used to everything being different. One of them being he now has a larger grain tank on this combine. Then you add in me taking the "new" trailer which has 84 inch sides rather than 72 inch sides like we always used to have. He had the trailer loaded level full. HE had the corn contracted with an ethanol plant that I could get to without getting off of country gravel roads other then the last half mile. So I drove slow and careful. Crossed the scales weighing 109,680 lbs. gross, 1360 bushels of corn. The truck is legal to 96K but he kind of missed that. LOL

There are two good parts of this. First he got done with his corn crop. Second, I did not encounter any DOT officials on the trip. LOL Almost 7 ton over would not have been a fun ticket.

Helped my brother back in SD a few years ago. I was running the cart and loading out the semis. Every once in awhile the scales would be closed on the way to the ethanol plant and the trucker would tell me to "fill er up". One day they only had one truck, other driver had pulled a little too far on the shoulder and twisted off the drive shaft.....
 
Yep, just like Willie says. We call them frost laws, some call them weight restrictions on rural roads. Class A roads are ok to run full weight though. I believe it is 35% reduced weight, or 35% weight of total capacity, can't remember the number. It scares most of the guys off the rural roads if they don't HAVE to haul something. Unless you are a farmer, then it doesn't apply for agricultural products and commodities, whether you are the farmer or the supplier.
 
(quoted from post at 19:18:47 12/02/16) Jocco
In Mn we call them Spring Load Restrictions. In our area the time period varies, southern areas usually starts in early March, can last up to late May in northern areas. It is that time that the frozen road bed is starting to thaw, between winter frozen & summer dried out. Weight limits during this time are reduced, depending on the moisture condition in the road bed & the type of surface material. Subject to change as weather warms up & amount of snow melt/ rain fall.
I know, my explanation is clear as mud, but it covers the ground.

Willie

They get real picky with weight restrictions out here in the spring. You have to measure the width of your tires and figure the weight per tire. I delivered an 8000# tractor a couple of years ago and the buyer told me to pull over and look for DOT before turning onto his road...said they were being real pricks to the farmers in the area.
 
Early in my driving career I hauled asphalt on an interstate highway project. Batch plant was on site so not on any public roads. Early on we were paid by the ton. Several times I had in excess of 100,000# IN THE BED. This was on a Diamond Reo triaxle. Not a semi. Cummins 250: 13 spd double overdrive: 44,000# Rockwells with 5.17 ratio and Hendrickson rubber pad, walking beam suspension.
 
holy smokes jd ,!, I did sumthin similar to a neighbor fella , he had 1180 bu, told him I needed atrailer parked at the 40 acre field ,,, he told me to put about 950 bu on it , I said no problem ,thinking he would use the trailer I was used to loading . well shux , he had a long trailer I never seen before ,, and whenbi run a load into the trailer from my 300 massey,. after 4 or5loads I kinda lost track,. it was a great day to shell corn and thelittle 300 massey wanted to et the whole field,. and I fit it on the semi trailer,. lol
 
LOL that happened to one one of my neighbor's trucks this fall when he was hauling for a neighborhood get together helping another farmer get done. There were four grain carts running. He had a tall trailer tandem axle sitting there that was full to legal weight but he left it parked and walked away leaving the tarp open. While he was gone a full grain cart came up to his truck and saw the tarp open and filled it up. He was only 107,000.
 
Well, on a single trailer it's a bit I'd say. Yeah, no problem with doubles and logs. A set of doubles with beech would go around 175,000 sometimes. Had a guy that hauled a set of super trains set up for grain, loaded with gravel. He said his weigh ticket from the scale was 226,000. Said he knew it was heavy, the 565 ISX Cummins had to work more than usual.
 
Man oh man can someone guess what that ticket would cost? Makes me want to quake with fear. Down here in SJ the local railroad has their overnight yard just down the road. Now and then they had a local crane company come in to lift one end of a diesel locomotive so they could change out a wheel set or a motor. Welllll one day the crane came in from another job without going back to the yard. This is one of those big five axle babys. Made it into their yard after going over the county bridge. Now you know where this is going don't you. The crane had the largest counter weight on the ars end that the machine could carry. Got the job done and headed home. Got all of 1/3 of a mile down the road and planted the far end of the bridge with the crane down into the 20 foot deep railroad cut. Guese who paid for the bridge???!!! Does something like 11/2 million sound close?
 
1342.5 bushels of corn at 113,960# gross is my heaviest load. Thirty nine foot frameless aluminum dump behind a Western Star. Later on I figured the fine at around $13,000, had I been caught. Next load that day was 79,820#. Truck seemed to stop quicker for some reason!

672 bushels of heavy test weight wheat on a tandem Chevrolet weighed 58,600#. That old 427 was really talking that day! Ran real good going home. Definitely cleaned all the carbon out! Granary manager said that was their record load for a 10 wheeler.

I definitely don't run this way all the time, nor do I recommend it!
 
I know a fella who got caught in the middle of the night with a tractor and trailer loaded with lime. Grossed over 150,000#. Maximum allowed here in VA is 80,000. Fifty percent over is a criminal offense. He was arrested, handcuffed, hauled off, and had to sell the truck to pay the fine! He basically had three loads in one trailer.
 
my neighbor who combines my corn uses belt trailers, for hauling mash from ethonol plant, uses them for hauling grain, ive seen 1400 plus on the scale tickets, 5 miles to grain terminal
 
reminded me of being a passenger when we took a load of drill pipe across a very short bridge at a very high speed. 100,000 lbs. across a 20,000 lbs. weight limit bridge. I wanted to walk across first & let'm pick me up on the far side but he never slowed down. Sometimes I wonder how I made it this far!
 
I used to pull an 8 wide 5 high Merritt. Two good piles of corn in front, one in back, pretty close to 80,000.

Then the guy I was working for would pull the 8'6" wide, 6 high, Merritt under the auger and put the same 3 piles on. 100,000.

Last year on the last wheat field, they had 65,000 on it, and a half a load on the cart. Then he dumped the 9770, and the half load from the cart in it. I was told the old 400 N14 couldn't pull high range.

I'd have looked at the load and gone home.

But then he wonders why his trailers always need welded up and why his 5th wheel breaks. This summer they twisted the kingpin off the smaller trailer.

Wonder why.....
 
That's not so much. I can only haul about 700-750 bushel legal on our dump trailer. The empty weight is killing me working alone. I need about 3 more axles then I could haul a decent load on it.
R Boots. I think you have that farm commodities thing off a little or at least for Shiawassee county as they will pull over a load of hay on a flat trailer. They have weighed me several times for loads. Always was legal except for the old dodge onetime. I still don't think it was right he weighed me on the state highway 3 miles down from the road we live on. He did ot see me on the road either. But then Shiawassee county is a good ole boys county and has been for decades.
I get a few loads when my brother loads that are close to 100,000 I have to keep reminding him of the limit.
 
Are you allowed and percentage over if you are hauling from field? We are allowed 10% over if hauling out of field but the max legal weight is 80,000 here. I have seen those big trailers that is used to haul bean hauls out come in with close to 130,000 on.
 
It amazes me just how many city idiots are one this forum!!! 109000 is probably too heavy, but going less then 30 miles, mainly on county roads, get real people. That is just a fact of life in rural America. I am sure JDs equipment is in top condition, and from what I have read of his posts, he is pretty cautious. I would a whole bunch rather meet him on the road, then some of the over the road drivers I see.
Around here, cow trucks can get permitted to run 120000, with enough axles under them. I have seen a number of quad axle tractors, pulling quad axle fuel trailers, and they are winding their way into cities. Give me a cautious farmer any day!!! That being said, the guy I used to work for never maintained any of his trucks. I have seen him come out of the field grossing 110000, with no brakes on his trailers. Both me and a part time driver refused to drive his trucks. As far as I know, he still doesn't have any brakes on his cow trailer, and he is running into Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma.
 
Several years ago, I helped run a food stand that that was a fund-raiser for one of my son's high school organizations. We set up a food stand right next to the scale at the local elevator and sold brat and hamburger meals. As the farmers would pick up their scale tickets, they had to walk downwind from our grill and we got quite a few impulse sales. ANYWAY, I was amazed at how many semi drivers were bragging about how overweight they were. I remember one driver repeatedly bragging that his ticket was about 30,000 overweight each time he picked up his ticket, all day long.
So you weren't the only one.
 
I picked up a load in St. Louis once that as soon as the truck hit the trailer I knew it was overloaded by a lot. I reported it to the shipper and they gave me the "we load hundreds of trucks a day, we know what we're doing" response. I called Dart and reported it and they said to take it to a scale. The scale could weigh 120,000 pounds, but couldn't weight my truck. They had put 2 45,000 pound loads in the box. They had to send a truck to the truckstop to unload it before Dart would let me move.

In Mn. the dot can and does go to the elevators to check the scale slips and issue tickets.
 
111000 is a normal load here on a tridem provided you have sufficient internal wheelbase.... and you're on a full weight road. 83000 is the max on local roads...

Rod
 
And then the farmers cry and moan when they're asked to pay more taxes to fix the roads that they tear up. Should be a penny per bushel tax over the scale. Or a heavy initial point of sale tax for every gravity flow wagon or manure tanker sold dedicated to road repair.
 
How many of the many thousands of dollars a year that a farmer already pays go towards those roads now?
 
A local grain elevator used to load semis at my grain bins and haul them to Kansas City..
Several of the drivers said fill it..I saw several scale tickets over 110,000 lbs..
 
the year of my divorce I dump trukt for a livin ,,. I was the last truck to load with millings before they knokt off for rhe day ,,. the millin operator was bound and determined to get to the bridge over he road before he turned me loose ,.. we could not make it , he had the millins pouring off the side of the truck and had heaped it over the cab board too ,.. comin back to corydon on 1-64 that cummins was really a hummin ,, one hill I pulled at 25 mph,. when I got to the scale house woody refused to weigh me ,. hetold me to get that off the truck rite away before anyone sees it
 
Overweight yes but still safer than a lot of the tractor/2 huge V box sets. The guy that bought our farm must run well over 1000 acres plus custom harvesting. He has at least 2 sets of 2 wagons over 600 bu each pulled by a tractor that he pulls a 7 furrow plow with. He may not go as fast as a semi but I cannot imagine an emergency stop or what would happen if the wagons started pushing on a downgrade.
 
Here in MN the DOT does periodic random scale ticket checks at the local ethanol plant and elevators. They go back several weeks sometimes and at harvest they often write a bunch of tickets. My neighbor got nailed for close to 20K a couple years ago.
 
Bought my first road tractor last year in college . Had trucks for over twenty years. Never ever had one of my drivers overload. LOL Thats my story and I'm sticking with it!!!!!!!!!!
 
elevator I used to work at had a guy come in with a tall sided titan trailer. He pulled on the scale and the scale screen just said "E". We soon realised that meant error. We ended up split weighing him and I don't remember what the weight ended up being but the scale was good for 80,000 KILOGRAMS!!!!
 
Not nearly enough apparently, especially if they do stupid stuff like this then tell about it on the internet.
 
He probly pays more taxes yearly just on his truck than a wage earner pays in total for the year, so he more than pays his share. Then you can add in all the property taxes as well as all the other taxes he pays to equal an amount that likely excedes the total yearly income for most wage earners. Saying he is not paying his share seems silly to me.
 
The dot in Ohio checks elevator tickets and gives out tickets after the fact.
 
It's going to be interesting as more and more rural gravel roads need to be upgraded. In western Iowa many of the east-west gravel roads have not been updated since the 1930's or 1940's. They don't have bridges that can handle today's heavy loads and wide farm equipment. I suspect a lot of the miles that have no houses will eventually be abandon or will become private roads because it will cost way too much to upgrade them for the little traffic they carry. The county, state and federal roads will continue to be improved, but the township roads will not because even the farmers who use them most will balk at the real cost.
 
He came from Elkton all the way to Richmond on 64, which meant he came over Afton Mountain! Losing it on Afton wouldn't have turned out very well, either! It turns out one of the other truckers hauling out of the same quarry turned him in.
 
David the tractor and trailer are tri-axles. So we are licensed for 96,000. That is legal on IA and MN roads but not the Federal interstates. So we can not run I-80 or I-380 weighing 96K. We can run 20,30 and 61. We have to watch at Waterloo, 20 switches to I-380 where they merge, so there is about 3 miles that is Federal Hwy. So we have to jump up and run Old 20 into 218 and jump back down to 20.
 
jon f mn: We are legal to 96,000. The truck and trailer both are tri-axles. The trailer has 3200 miles on it and the tractor has under 75,000 miles. So I can guarantee that truck and trailer are SAFE!!!!

The total State and federal taxes plus license fees for this ONE truck is right at $6600 each year. The extra fees to go from 80K to 96K almost double the cost of the state tags. Then the road tax on the fuel, $.325 per gallon, makes that go even higher.

I will guarantee that I had more rubber on the road than the fellows pulling BIG gravity boxes with their tractors. My per axle weight would be less too.

So to the ones saying I am not paying MY SHARE of taxes BIT ME!!!!!! My combined annual tax bill from everybody, state, federal and county is more than I made annually for the first fifty years I was alive!!!! I pay more in taxes than my youngest two kids MAKE each year and they do not have bad jobs.

As for them giving me a ticket. That would be pretty hard. The grain was not sold in my name and I do not haul to this plant any. So They have zero record of who or what I was. Plus the fellow running the scale told me he was glad to see a SMALL load. The tandem gravity wagons in front and behind me each weight over 120K each.

So do not worry fellows that think that what I did/do is terrible, I am learning to not post much on here. I have cut way back and I can see the need to post even less.
 

I won't claim that I have never hauled a heavy load, but I have always avoided them, and I will tell the guys that I drive part time for to not do it again when they put a load on me that forces me down another gear than usual on a given hill. Many trucks are specially designed, built, and permitted to carry heavy loads and that is fine. I will not say that some posters to this thread are idiots, as one poster said about those posting about stupid heavy loads, but I will say that some of you guys are making yourselves sound like idiots. What you need to remember is that truck weight laws are in place for your as well as the general public's safety and well being. No matter how carefully you drive and how new and well maintained your rig is, there is no denying that an overload is likely to contribute to your involvement in an accident or make an accident worse with possible injury or death resulting. The more overloaded you are the more likely a little accident could turn into a bad one, and you could end up in jail and your wife and kids on the street. This can ruin more than your whole day. The ambulance chasing lawyer can get by without your money!
 

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