An Expensive mistake!

We've just completed a very successful three days at the RWM exhibition at the NEC. Hard on the feet but good enough for us to provisionally book our stand for next year again.

All of the conversations we have with potential customers are interesting but some can be more interesting than others. And sometimes it's the ones who aren't going to buy anything which give us most to discuss when the customer has moved on.

The one that sticks in my mind this year is the conversation we had with a guy from a company who had bought an axle weighbridge from a company that clearly didn't know what they were doing. It was, as this chap said, a very expensive mistake.

The system in question had been bought from a company with quite an impressive website albeit one that gives the impression they are a bit of a 'jack of all trades.' They certainly aren't the master of the axle weighing trade.

Intended to weigh the largest of goods vehicles, it was actually installed with a slope either side of the weighing platform. This meant that no amount of adjusting the calibration, changing the load cells or electronics was ever going to make the system weigh accurately.

It may just look like a flat piece of boring concrete
but it's vital for system accuracy.

Multi-axle vehicles need to have perfectly flat concrete approaches either sided of the weighing platform. Years of research by ourselves and independent bodies have shown how important it is for weighing large, multi-axle vehicles accurately.

The customer we were chatting to had clearly been badly advised. Not only had he spent in the region of £8,000.00 on a system which didn't work, he then replaced it with a much more expensive system which, although it weighed accurately presented a number of other problems.

Not only did he pay twice to solve his problem, he now has a large structure in his yard taking up loads of space and is a target for vehicles to hit and get damaged. Tyre damage was one example he gave us while we were chatting.

One can understand how he might be shy of installing another axle weighbridge. I think anyone would if they have had a bad experience but with the correct advice on siting and installation, there is no vehicle an axle weighbridge won't be able to weigh accurately.

We couldn't help that customer but hopefully he's got food for thought and might pass what he's learnt onto others. We look forward to hearing from them if he does.