Weights And States

Hello folks,

Had a small conundrum yesterday and today, looking for ideas and advice so I'll just lay out the situation.

This had to do with axle weights and spread laws in differing states. As I understand it, CA, WI, CT, NY and FL all require axles to be closed on a 53 spreadable trailer. In MD the axles must be spread open.

Ok a spread axle allows for 20k per axle. In CT, the weight allowed is 34k on trailer tandems but NY allows 36k.

3/11 arrive in CT at Nucor. Get loaded on a closed axle 53 trailer. Pic related.

At first, I weighed on the shipper scale and the trailer axle was at 35,600. This is fine, my Rightweigh in the cab was showing just under 31k ish so I asked them to move a bundle from over the trailer tandems to where the front bundle is in the photo (most forward bundle of round wire bales on top of the rusty mesh layers). Bundles weigh (allegedly) 2700 even.

RW shows 33k now and I need fuel. I add 80 gallons (8 lbs per gallon = 640 lbs , a little bit if which will be shared with the front axle).

3/12- wake up at 0140, start cruising toward my drop off in Maryland. In Pennsylvania, decide to be proactive and spread the axles to conform with Maryland laws, since it doesn't matter in PA anyway.

RW in cab goes to almost 35k. Fancy. Now I'm either not spreading the axles or overweight on my drives.

How would you go about it? How should this have been prevented?

I tried to get a half bale moved at the shipper initially (1350 lbs) but they are built together now and can only be shifted as a 2700 lb unit.

Guess I should add my solution for critique as well.

Had I been loading in NY I would have been fine with the first load and just spread the axle at the PA line, the little bit of extra weight on my tandems would still have kept me in the legal range.

I closed the axles to get back to legal in PA. I then pulled my route on the GPS and had it display weigh stations on the route. Pulled out the atlas to check and confirm. No weigh stations even near the top of MD for a while. Crossed the border, spread the axle so at least I would be visually compliant and kept my hopes up that no pop up weigh stations were about.

I'm not one to avoid weigh stations because I know I'm heavy but in this case, I just got lucky I guess.

Cali, Connecticut and Florida are the only states that require them closed. Cali sticks you at 12,34,34. Connecticut allows 36 on the trailer and Florida allows 44 on a tandem set. If you know you're going to be doing a lot of Florida and don't want to close them, you can purchase an annual permit for the truck for $110 , unless they changed the price.

Cali, Connecticut and Florida are the only states that require them closed.

Not true with Prime 53' spread axle trailers.

WI and NY allow 43' to center of rear axles, requiring Prime trailers to close the spreads in order to comply.

Spaceman, it's important to not just think of states as "open or closed" states , but also to think of the actual law behind it. If you ever hook up to a trailer with a different configuration from what Prime uses, you'll need to know how the law applies to whatever trailer you are pulling.

To answer your question, you were probably good to begin with, especially at Nucor. Those guys are usually pretty good at loading a trailer.

At 35,600 on your tandems , you would have been legal to run CT and NY with the axles closed. Once leaving those states you could've opened the spread, which would shift 2000-2500 lbs to the drives, depending on load placement, putting you right in the legal range you need to be in MD and beyond.

Not true with Prime 53' spread axle trailers.

This is important. It depends on how your trailer is configured. Some 53 footers have the adjustable rear axle all the way to the rear when they're open. This is how Prime's trailers are configured. I have the same issue with many of our trailers. Ours are set up several different ways.

Which trailer axles move on the flatbeds?

The rear axle

I honestly did not know CT was 36k legal. That is a learning curve. Thanks for making that run a lot easier on my mind in the future guys.

Different trailer set ups also interest me now, I'll add that to the bedtime smartphone browse list.

On the upside, I got another Nucor sticker on my Spaceman Spiff hard hat.