No Scale? No Problem.

Payload is vital to a log hauler’s productivity, but to Matthew Ritcey, it’s only part of the equation. To be successful, he says, you need to load with precision, efficiency, and confidence that you’re compliant with vehicle weight rules.

Ritcey operates Ritcey & Sons, a family-run log truck operation in Bridgewater, N.S. He and his seven-axle tractor-trailer unit haul stud wood out of the bush in southwestern Nova Scotia. He’s been doing it for the better part of a decade, so when Ritcey slips into the seat of his loader, he has a good idea how much timber he can pile on.

“Nowadays, the cost of trucking is so high, and enforcement so strict, gut feel or air gauges aren’t precise enough,” he says. “If we’re overweight, the fine can eat up our profit. Now, with our weight tolerance going away, there’s extra pressure to run legal.”

Nova Scotia has allowed a 500-kilogram per-axle tolerance — the only jurisdiction in North America with a tolerance written into regulation. But that ended Jan. 1, 2006. Tolerances are now left to the discretion of enforcement officers.

On a seven-axle vehicle, that’s a loss of 3,500 kg. “If you’re used to loading logs to the tolerance all these years,” Ritcey says, “and you don’t have a way to verify your weight when you leave the bush, you’re risking big fines and safety infractions.”

While the stakes may not be quite as high on Canada’s other coast, overweight fines for non-compliant loggers can still run between $1,000 and $2,000. “That’s enough,” says Dan Henry, a former logger turned union leader in Prince George, B.C., “to take the profit right out of a week’s work.”

In the Prince George area of B.C., loggers have been doing battle with the pine beetle while truckers struggle to get the weight right.

“The beetles chew up the insides of the tree, killing them eventually, but in the process, the wood dries out considerably,” says Henry. “Lately, we’ve been topping out before we reach our gross weights. But every now and then, we get a green patch. That wood is wet and heavy, and can really upset the weights if you aren’t watching.”

For the highway crowd, weight can be just as sensitive. Keeping the weight evenly distributed over the axle groups to avoid fines is a constant struggle. In time-sensitive applications, a trip to a public scale could mean a missed appointment, or at the very least, a bunch of off-route — non-revenue — miles.

In May, Ritcey deployed a wireless onboard scale called Smart Scale, made by TruckWeight Inc. The payback was immediate. Ritcey averaged six overweight fines a year — ranging from $150 to $210 each — but hasn’t had one since Smart Scale was installed.

“It not only helps us maximize our legal payload, we’re more efficient than anyone else because we can quickly and easily check our axle weights in the bush and fine-tune the load distribution,” Ritcey says. “While other guys are eyeballing it and repositioning logs or sliders, we’re strapping down and getting ready to go.”

The TruckWeight sensors measure temperature and pressure changes in the air suspension and relay the data to the handheld receiver using a low-powered radio transmitter. A small computer in the receiver interprets the data and provides an axle weight and gross vehicle weight measurement that’s accurate to within 150 pounds.

Air-scales have been slow to catch on in the west, Henry says. Traditional load-cell scales are standard spec on most loggers. The load cells are usually installed under the fifth-wheel, as well as under the log bunks. Henry says the load cells are still preferred because “they tell us what we’ve loaded, exactly. On the uneven ground in the bush, the air scales often don’t read properly ’till we’ve released the brakes and rolled out to flat ground,” he says.

Regardless of the environment, on-board truck scales are proving themselves as money savers and money makers. The initial investment is pretty reasonable, and the payback comes quickly. They’re easy to remount on the next truck, and they don’t require much in the way of care and feeding.