Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Overload Your 18 Wheeler

Trucks can carry quite a lot of cargo at once, but some people tend to push the envelope a little bit too far when it comes to maximum load capacity. While a few kilos won’t do any harm to you, the reality is that there are quite a lot of trucks leaving for the destination with a weight that is way over their maximum carrying capacity. This has many implications which may or may not be obvious at first.

Below are just a few reasons why you should never attempt this, and why you need to buy axle weigh pads as soon as possible in order to weigh all of your trucks before they depart:

Difficulty to Gain Control

Excess weight makes trucks hard to control. Since they are already quite a handful with their massive weights when compared to other road-going vehicles, you really shouldn’t complicate matters further by adding even more weight on top of this. Added weight can make a truck difficult to turn, stop or even just keep on the road, thereby causing accidents which can cause harm to both goods and human lives.

It is an Illegal Practice

No matter whether your truck can actually carry excess cargo or not, this is considered to be an illegal practice virtually anywhere you are likely to go. If you don’t want to get in trouble with the police and risk having to pay hefty fines, make sure to use truck scales to see whether you have or have not exceeded the total cargo carrying capacity of your truck and attached trailer.

The Cargo May Get Damaged

Overloading a truck often involves putting cargo in different arrangements, some of which may not really be ideal to preserve the integrity of the cargo itself. If you are carrying fragile materials, overloading your truck could result in cargo damage during transit, something which could be avoided if you were to properly load them according to the maximum carrying capacity of your truck.

Puts Excessive Strain on Vehicle Parts

Carrying cargo way over the total limit can also put undue pressure on most of your truck component. At best, you will experience uneven or rapid wear of truck components, but you also run the risk of incurring in catastrophic tyre failures and blowouts. Your service intervals will also be shortened, which will increase the running costs associated with keeping your truck roadworthy.

Roads Wear Out Faster

Don’t ever think that the government has laid out all of these roads for you to drive. Roads are public property, and when truckers drive over them with their overloaded vehicles, they are actually destroying these roads at a rapid rate. Consequently, everybody is going to pay the price even though you were the person to drive a vehicle that is not fully compliant with the rules on this stretch of road.