It's good to just help out sometimes

We undertook a weighing exercise for a customer recently, with the help of those good people from DVSA, who had concerns about possibly overloading a doubledeck trailer.

Being based in a leafy part of the country it might be thought that an operator can pass under the radar of the authorities but that’s not the case when a long distance trunking operation is involved.

Quite naturally, the business has to run efficiently using the minimum number of vehicles but maximising the carrying capacity on every trip.

But that runs the risk of overloading so they needed to find an accurate, calibrated axle weighbridge to make sure they were running legally laden. With no local weighbridges around, and certainly none open during their operating hours, they approached us for help.

Once again it's an example of how there is a need for publicly available axle weighing systems around the UK. Axle weighing systems that are open when the transport industry needs them, frequently anything but what are considered normal working hours.

Could an Axtec help increase your profits?

There is a market out there for this sort of facility just waiting for enterprising operators to install their own dynamic axle weighbridges and charge other operators using it.

We invested our money into this by offering a system for hauliers check their axle and gross weights for a charge of only £6 per vehicle. And it now generates between £6-£10,000.00 income a year.

The purchase price of an installation might be £18-£20,000.00 but an income of £6,000.00  per year would pay for it in very short order. And the cost can be spread over a number of years too so no large upfront investment might be needed.

A well designed axle weighing system would have a life expectancy of 30 years or more so plenty of time to recoup the cost and thereafter generate income which goes straight onto your bottom line.

It's not only charging for using the axle weighbridge that could up your profits though. What if an overload is discovered? You could charge for a forklift to remove the excess and for its storage.  Or maybe even use one of your own vehicles to deliver the extra load. All at a price of course.

And rather than us have to arrange access to a DVSA weighbridge, we'd be quite happy referring those customers who need to weigh axles to your site instead.