We started the day later than the previous two ... got to sleep in until 6 a.m. We were scheduled for a 7 a.m. pick up at Amercian Talc in Van Horn TX.
(Did you know that there are talc "mines?" all across the country? This is the second one I've personally been to, the first being in upstate NY. And, they use a lot of PPE just in case anyone who cares about that kind of thing is reading this. Hard hats, tyvek, disposable masks, safety glasses, steel toes, hairnets ... I could go on.)
On the way there, we cross the Central/Mountain time zone ... which means we're officially an hour early. Thankfully, there are already guys milling around and the ladies in the office pull in just behind us. They'll take us early.
We get 22 2,000-lb. bags of talc, to be delivered in Milwaukee Friday between 7 a.m. and 2 p.m. The backhaul load is coordinated through his company dispatcher and a freight broker. The goal of the backhaul is to pay for the fuel and driver to get home, while making as much on top of that as you can. Typically, you'd make less per mile (which is how loads are priced out) than you would on the way out. The outgoing load is the bread and butter. The backhaul is the jam, if you will.
44,000 lbs. of anything presents a bit of a challenge as the maximum weight of the whole rig with us and everything in it can only be 80,000 lbs. The tractor, minus all our stuff, but including a full set of fuel tanks weighs about 35,400 lbs. That means we're at 79,400 without accounting for him, me, my curling iron and books, his microwave and cases of bottled water.
The talc place has a scale and we weigh out on it. We're over the gross 80k by a smidge (forgot to calculate the weight of the pallets), but know their scale could be off, too. Plus, it doesn't take long to burn off fuel weight as we'd fueled up last night. For anyone who cares, diesel weighs 6.6 lbs/gal.
See ... not only do truck drivers have to do paperwork and computer crap, they also get to do MATH!
So gross weight we were OK, but we weren't OK as far as the distribution of that weight. DOT requires that the weight of the whole rig be distributed over the three axles to certain specifications. 12,000 lbs. on the steer axle (very front tires on the truck, for us girls), 34,000 lbs. on the two drive axles or "drives" (the back double set of tires on truck) and 34,000 on the two trailer axles. Depending on how heavy the load is, where it is put on the floor of the trailer, how long the trailer is (most common are 48- and 53-footers), those three axles carry different weights. The driver can distribute that weight by moving the trailer axles forward or backward.
Huh? Trailer tires move? Yes. They can be moved on this pin-and-hole system that to me looks like the pinlock hard hat suspension. You pull the pin manually or push the button on the trailer if you have air assist, hop in the truck, drive forward or backward until you are approximately where you need to be, hop back out and check to make sure, then, if you're OK, unlock the pin or push the button and then drive a smidge forward or backward until the pin falls back into a hole.
By doing this, you change the distribution of the weight on each axle. He does these calculations in his head. I get a headache when he tries to explain it to me. It all sounds like a science experiment. And, for the record, you also move the trailer axles when you are in a city and have to make tight corners. But I barely got through that last explanation, so forgive me for not going into more detail.
We double-checked the weight distribution thing at a CAT scale at a truckstop for good measure and $9. If you get caught being overweight, it's something like $200 plus $/pound for every pound you're over and you can't leave the scale house until you are underweight.
Anyway, we're loaded, legal and on the way home. Looking like Fort Worth/Dallas at evening rush hour. Yay!
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