Getting the heck outta Dodge

I was out of time last night, and also completely exhausted, so I didn't scale this new load until this morning. The paperwork said the gross weight was 43,800 lbs of cargo which would leave me some breathing room even with full tanks. Imagine my (lack of) surprise when I scaled with my tanks 1/3 full at 79,800 lbs. I was going to be a few hours behind on the load already and I was, technically, under gross weight so I doubted the 3-5 hour wait for them to rework the load -- assuming they would -- would be a viable alternative.

It took three tries to get the weight distributed as close to legal as possible. Since the trailer tandems slide on a series of holes, at that weight each hole was about a 450 pound weight transfer so if you end up a hundred heavy your alternative is to go 350 light on the rear then 450 more pounds up front, which would have put me off there.

Fortunately, my nice truck MPG worked in my favor and I drove more than 500 miles before I added 50 gallons to get me to Walcott, Iowa to where another driver was waiting to swap loads. His load picked up in Illinois headed to Colorado and mine was going to Chicago, so he backtracked and I'm kind of backtracking now.


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