The $8,945.00 fine - Page 2

Ahh ok, general law any two axle must not weight more than 34000 lbs, vehicle weight and payload combimed

OK, so this guy was something like 10,800lbs overweight....BUT the DOT system of measurement in SD is a little strange.

Basically it states the maximum axle weight is the width of the tread in total on each axle times 500lbs... Someone should really give them a lesson in physics since you can in fact have a skinny tire AND have a larger footprint. Example: Supersingles are very wide, but running 110 psi vs duals running 95 psi, the duals will have a larger footprint. Why? Well, it's simple, the tire's carcass weight plus the pounds per square inch is the actual footprint of the tire on the road surface.

let's use my dodge. 6,000 lbs with me in it. I run my tires at 42psi, conincidentally the tire weighs 42 lbs. Static tire psi on the ground would be close to 43psi...thus a tire off the truck with nothing but the tire and rim combination would have slightly more than 1.5 square inches of complete tread contact with the road soooo.... a 6000lb truck, divided by four tires, divided again by the the air pressure of the tire would equal the contact patch on the ground... aka

35.7 square inches of surface per tire.

http://www.sddot.com/resources/Broch...riefing_2d.pdf <<<thats my source for the SD DOT information.

Anyways...it's a ****ty way for them to tag you with a fine on a smaller truck, just my opinion. In fact, cut me a ticket like that and I'm going to make your whole state look like morons for coming up with this stupendous failure of math. Imagine if your running a Single axle grain truck on 9.50- tires...those older trucks are rated for SERIOUS weight, always have been...but according to DOT math, a few mattresses would put you over weight.

That must have been very overweight.

Now, it says that it was overweight on an axle. Do we know if it's a semi axle? I've seen farmers go overboard on loading goosenecks, too.

Who knows what happened. I feel bad if he was a farm driver who worked where there was no scale to weigh on nearby. If he worked for a freight company, though, he should have reasonable access to a scale somewhere.

I was overweight by about 100 pounds on a truck once, but this had to be very overloaded to cause an $8900 fine. Or there was something else wrong, too???