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Virginia Contractor Saves $2,000/week by Avoiding Overload Fines

Virginia Contractor Saves $2,000/week by Avoiding Overload Fines

Virginia Contractor

Overview

Anderson Company Virginia specializes in full service site work, excavation, and demolition. Recently they started a large, five month excavation project for a commercial and residential development in the center of Washington DC. This project involved removal of 270,000 cubic yards of material to one of four off-site locations within a 20-mile radius.

Challenge

Without a weighbridge onsite, the Anderson Company was seeing large overload fines. Nathan Day, a consultant for Anderson on this project comments “We have noticed that weights and measures authorities have started monitoring overloads closely. The truck contractors don’t have the money to pay the fines, so we are the ones that absorb the costs,” At $300 per incident, their overload fines were averaging $1,800 per week. To reduce their overload fines, Anderson started to load their trucks with more caution. “We started under loading our trucks because of the number of fines we were receiving. This turned out to be costly for us too” adds Nathan. 

“With today’s operating costs, we needed to know how much we were sending out on each truck. We would send random trucks to a mobile scale and found that on average, we were under-loading each truck by two tons.” 

This created a new problem, with an average of 300 trucks per day leaving the site, under-loading by two tons resulted in 600 fewer tons hauled per day. Since they were using 20 ton trucks, this is equivalent to 20 extra truckloads daily that were required to compensate for the under loading. 

At $80 per truckload this amounted to $1,600 per day of savings by sending fully loaded trucks.

Solution

The local dealer Loadrite Mid-Atlantic solved the problem by installing a LOADRITE X2350 weighing system on the excavator. This allowed them to accurately load their trucks easily, without slowing the excavators normal movement. Excavator operator Mickey finds the system easy to use, “I just have to hit a couple of buttons on the move and that’s it. There’s no restriction, I can just get on with the job. Since it’s been installed, it’s been working really well. I’ve had no trouble with the weights, and no complaints from any of the truck drivers about overloading. I wouldn’t make any changes to the system, from an operators standpoint, it’s simple.” No longer were they getting overload fines, or under loading their trucks. “Since we purchased this system, we have not received any overload fines. We expect the system to pay for itself on this job alone.” For Anderson, the LOADRITE X-2350 excavator weighing system delivered tangible payback over the duration of the project. By sending out fully loaded trucks they can move 10% more material per day. This increased capacity will shorten the removal stage of the project by 10 days (10% of 100 days).

“Since we purchased this system, we have not received any overload fines. We expect the system to pay for itself on this job alone.”

The 300 trucks loaded per day, at $80 per truck, results in $24,000 per day in disposal fees. The Anderson Company can realize a potential savings of $240,000 in removal costs. This alone represents significant savings, without taking into account the fuel cost savings by dispatching 30 fewer truckloads per day, or the peace of mind through the reduction of overload fines.