United States guys - what LEGAL significance does GVWR or GCWR Have?

[Aaron]

Like the title says.

 

And documentation of such?

 

Ie: if you load a vehicle over GVWR or GCWR and there is an accident - is there liability because the vehicle is over gross weight rating, or is it merely used as a guideline?

 

I have a guy telling me there's no legal binding to gross weight and I think he is full of shit.

[Fredsvt]

It depends...

Here in NJ, pretty much every landscaper and contractor runs insanely overweight on under sized vehicles without penalty.

 

We routinely see F350s loaded like they are F550s or bigger.  IIRC if it's registered over 10,000 and a diesel, "self inspection" DOT rules apply, for which no one does. 

 

Many guys with F550 and above seem to run around inspection-less without penalty.

 

The only time we ever ran into an issue, a fleet customer of ours, at the time, had a Dodge 3500 diesel rack body truck, pulling a trailer. (no inspection requirement) They crossed the border into Delaware, and the DE state police pulled them over.  The truck and trailer combined weighed 22,000.  The leasing company had the truck registered at 5000 lbs to save registration costs.  Uh oh.

The DE state police impounded it, the trailer and held the driver until he could get things partially straightened out.  It cost them 5 figures in fines, plus all the equipment down time, and trips to get the driver.

[DieselD]

Will live and die by the GVW numbers for all our trucks. Yes we have been pulled over and ticketed for the incorrect weight on registration and being over loaded. We operate in AZ,NM,TX, CO,and NV and its pretty much the same story in those states. If traveling between state lines in a commercial vehicle its required to go through the port of entry. Most of the time ifs its a non CDL truck or obviously loaded correctly they will just wave you through but they have been known to ask for the fuel tax on something as small as a pickup.

 

Here in AZ we get roadside DOT check points on occasion or simply a DPS DOT officer pulling over commercial vehicles at random. They check paperwork and do a roadside inspection depending on how arrogant the driver is. Hell they even pull out the portable scales if they want to be a dick.

 

We register everything at the manufacture GVW and have a unloaded weight sticker on the dash so we know what we can load them in at.

 

Any type of citation(traffic tickets, DOT complaiance, etc) even if its just a warning goes against our companys annual CSA scores, If we have too many infractions on that we could actually have our DOT number pulled to prevent us from doing buisness.

[DwayneGorniak]

A little off topic, but somewhat related. Three years ago, I bought my International 4700 tool truck in Columbus, Ohio. I drove it just over 3000 miles across the US up through Montana and back into Canada convoying with another distributor in his tool truck from BC. We stopped at every single weigh scale with transport decals/permits on the windshields. Every single weigh scale waved us through. Never had to provide any papers at all to any of them. I remember thinking to myself, Man, this was too easy and clear sailing all the way. I got to the border and the dick head Montana DOT officer fined me for not having filled out a log book. I tried to reason with the idiot and inform him that the brokers and the Lawyers told me I didn't need one because it was a class 5 truck and I was only transporting back to Canada. He made me buy a log book and fill it out and I had to pay the fine if I wanted to cross the border. Meanwhile, Gord crosses the border into BC with no questions asked and no problem at all. I was told by many truck drivers that the Montana dot at the Alberta border crossing are money hungry crooks and to never cross at that crossing again. They all told me to cross up through Saskatchewan and that the guys there are easy going. It sucks when you don't know all the laws and what your rights are or aren't. Next time I buy a truck from the US, I will cross through Saskatchewan or hire someone to bring it to Canada.

[Buddy_M]

A little off topic, but somewhat related. Three years ago, I bought my International 4700 tool truck in Columbus, Ohio. I drove it just over 3000 miles across the US up through Montana and back into Canada convoying with another distributor in his tool truck from BC. We stopped at every single weigh scale with transport decals/permits on the windshields. Every single weigh scale waved us through. Never had to provide any papers at all to any of them. I remember thinking to myself, Man, this was too easy and clear sailing all the way. I got to the border and the dick head Montana DOT officer fined me for not having filled out a log book. I tried to reason with the idiot and inform him that the brokers and the Lawyers told me I didn't need one because it was a class 5 truck and I was only transporting back to Canada. He made me buy a log book and fill it out and I had to pay the fine if I wanted to cross the border. Meanwhile, Gord crosses the border into BC with no questions asked and no problem at all. I was told by many truck drivers that the Montana dot at the Alberta border crossing are money hungry crooks and to never cross at that crossing again. They all told me to cross up through Saskatchewan and that the guys there are easy going. It sucks when you don't know all the laws and what your rights are or aren't. Next time I buy a truck from the US, I will cross through Saskatchewan or hire someone to bring it to Canada.

Sounds like rolling thru the scale at Culbertson MT, about an hour straight west of me. They love just nitpicking at anything they can to drive up fines. They tried to get my father to pay cash to escape a fine that went to the company. He declined to pay, so they fined the company about 10 times more than what they told him.

[Keith Browning]

Sounds like rolling thru the scale at Culbertson MT, about an hour straight west of me. They love just nitpicking at anything they can to drive up fines. They tried to get my father to pay cash to escape a fine that went to the company. He declined to pay, so they fined the company about 10 times more than what they told him.

 

 

ex•tor•tion (ɪkˈstɔr ʃən)

 

n.

1. an act or instance of extorting.

 

2. the crime of obtaining money or some other thing of value by the abuse of one's office or authority.

 

3. anything extorted.

 

 

He should have gotten his badge number and name and reported him.