Posted by David Sherman on Friday, April 21, 2006 at 4:39PM :
In Reply to: Re: Weigh Stations, yes or no? posted by Russ Roth on Friday, April 21, 2006 at 10:28AM :
I've driven that road many times a year ever since I was old enough to drive, and never once even saw the scale open. One day, heading west in my empty M35 with M105 trailer, the shack was open and the guy flagged me to come in. He claimed I needed to not only register it as a full commercial vehicle (I had it registered as a farm truck) but had to have a CDL to drive it because his book said everything with two rear axles could be rated at over 26,000 lbs and the fact that I registered it at 24,000 lbs didn't matter. We had quite a go-around on the subject. I showed him the military weight plate on the dash, but he didn't like it because it wasn't put on the door frame by the manufacturer. Eventually, the log trucks were backing up behind us and I think he just got disgusted with the whole thing and wrote me a fix-it ticket for no front plate, trip permit (for the trailer) not filled out in advance, leaky rear axle, and to pay full commercial gross weight fees. His final words were that if he ever catches me with 26,001 lbs in that truck, he'll throw the book at me. Now it's registered in Idaho, which has much lower weight fees, and with diesel at $3/gal, I can't afford to drive it past his scale even if I wanted to.