Waste weighing? One customers tale.

The RWM is THE exhibition for anyone handling or processing waste in any way, shape or form. 

So with the Show starting at the NEC tomorrow (15 September 2015) and running for the three days, it seemed appropriate to tell a story of how we improved efficiency for one of our customers in this sector.

H W Martin is one half of a public/private sector alliance that each year processes over 60,000 tonnes of dry recyclable materials collected by the council from the City’s 715,000 residents.

Six days a week material is delivered to the three acre site in Hunslett, where a team of 40 people sort it into its various categories using a highly mechanised system, with over 95% going for re-use. The constant flow of vehicles required a system for the fast and accurate weighing of both inbound and outbound vehicles to trade standards.

Limited space ruled out a conventional plate weighbridge but a better option was found with our dynamic weighbridge. This occupies a floor space of only 3 by 1 metres and vehicles are weighed in motion as they pass over at about walking pace.

Inbound and outbound axle weighbridges were installed as the site operates a one-way system with separate entrances and exits.

Further efficiencies came from the integration of the data coming from the two weighbridges with ISYS software. Data can be consolidated and stored for reporting and accounting purposes and weighbridge tickets can be instantly printed out. The use of a CCTV system to read number plates provides additional back-up.

 Our own in-house construction team undertook the work, which involved preparing the pits into which the weighbridges are placed and ensuring an absolutely level approach to them.

Fast, accurate axle weighing using an Axtec Dynamic system

The Axtec dynamic is the most accurate of its type in the world and has official certification that verifies accuracy to within 0.25%.

This is the same system that is the choice of the government body DVSA (Driver & Vehicle Standards Agency) for its national network of vehicle weight enforcement weighbridges.

So pleased were H W Martin with the finished result that they asked us to construct the pits for the loading conveyors, which also needed to be carried out to a very high standard of accuracy.

So if you’re looking for a fast, accurate, space saving solution for your waste weighing application, come and see us on stand 5P151 at the NEC this week and we’ll be pleased to show you what we can do.

Weighing waste? See you at RWM in September.

 The biggest waste and recycling exhibition in the country is just around the corner. The RWM Show is on at the NEC from 15-17 September for those that didn’t know.

It’s a terrific opportunity to meet with clients old and new and discuss the latest thinking and technology in recycling.

Monitoring waste throughput is vital these days. Almost every week we receive a tender from a local authority or private contractor for equipment to weigh waste.

And many of those applications can be served using an axle weighbridge.

The traditional plate weighbridge has an important role to play. There will always be applications where a large platform is essential. Those that need to weigh the vehicle as it’s being loaded for instance, but our Dynamic Axle Weighbridge can do everything  a plate weighbridge does and more.

And a smaller dynamic weighing platform could offer a number of advantages.

Space is always at premium these days. Just look at the old yellow platform weighbridge in the background of the picture and how much space it takes up compared with the axle weighbridge in the foreground.

An axle weighbridge - much less room needed.

The small footprint of an axle weighbridge means that it takes up very little space in the yard. Unlike a traditional 15m surface mounted weighbridge which will need about 47m of clear space to allow for vehicle approaches, ramps and the weighbridge itself.

Trading Standards advise us that the most common reason for a weighbridge to have its Approval revoked is debris building up under the platform. A large plate weighbridge might need the hire of an expensive crane to move the platform for cleaning.

The axle weighbridge has a very shallow pit and ours has corner pockets allowing most maintenance to be done without removing the platform.

But being a small platform, if really necessary, the whole thing can be lifted clear of the pit using a forklift or similar. The type of lifting facility most operators have readily available on site.

Be warned though – not axle weighbridges achieve the required standard allowing them to be Stamped for buying and selling.

The Axtec system is though. And in fact it achieves the necessary accuracy to be offered as a Public Weighbridge too.

So it could earn some money for your operation..

Interested?

We’ll be on stand 5P151 at the exhibition if you’d like to come and have a chat about your waste weighing needs.

Van Overloading - a Solution.

According to recent figures, the number of vans on the road now tops 3 million. And registrations in March were up 24% on the same month last year.

That’s an awful lot of people moving away from bigger vehicles and trying to do the same job with something smaller.

There a lot of advantages of course. No tachograph, no special training needed to drive one and they can frequently go where a bigger vehicle might not be able to.

But the rise in the use of light vehicles is causing some concern especially when nearly two-thirds of vans stopped by DVSA have a serious defect. In addition almost half of vans fail their MOT first time.

It’s one of the dangers of trying to use a smaller vehicle for a job that was traditionally done by a larger one. Of trying to cram a quart into a pint pot.

With the growth of vans on the road comes a rise in the calls to regulate them in the same way that HGV’s are. Unsurprisingly the operators don’t think the idea of an ‘O’ licence for vans is a good idea but, as so often happens, legislation maybe forced on the industry if they don’t regulate themselves.

The startling statistic that a whopping 93% of vans that were stopped were overloaded might bring that day forward.

Axle Weights Checked on this van and NOT overloaded!

So what can be done?

We’ve written before about van overloading as that at least is something we can help with.

An Axtec OnBoard Load Indicator is inexpensive to buy, but more importantly the customer calibration facility means routine maintenance costs are eliminated.

It can be connected to a tracking device so that those with larger fleets can be alerted to an overload, in real time in some cases.

Fitted on site by one of our directly employed technicians in less than half a day, disruption to the working day is kept to a minimum.

With many vans being used as little more than mobile tool boxes with staff that have no professional driving qualification, it’s little wonder that so many of them fall foul of the enforcement authorities.

But there are solutions out there and many professional van operators are already our customers. 

Hopefully more will want to show how professional they are and how serious they take the problem of overloading and stave off the threatened legislation.

Is 99.9% was good enough...

Achieving 99.9% accuracy in anything would seem to be pretty impressive. 

But according to some research done a while ago, it may not be good enough.

Apparently, 99.9% accuracy would mean that the US Postal Service would mis-handle 18,322 items per hour. Doctors would write 20,000 incorrect drug prescriptions per year. Manufacturers would produce 5.5 million cases of fizzy drinks that were flat. And two planes per day landing at Chicago O’Hare airport would be unsafe.

These statistics and more are freely available on line. Just Google “If 99.9% was good enough” to check yourself.

Accuracy then is key but just how accurate is your axle weighing system?

Weighing a heavy goods vehicle on a system that is accurate to 2% might sound impressive. But 2% of what?  Two systems which claim to weigh to within 2% can actually have wildly different accuracy.

For a percentage to be meaningful, you have to know what 100% is. But the weighing machine doesn’t know what 100% of the axle weight is. If it did, why not display it?

An axle Weighbridge - but how accurate it it?

So what does the 2% refer to?

When scale manufacturers refer to accuracy as a percentage, they mean a percentage of the capacity of the weighing machine.

If a machine has a capacity of 30,000kg with an accuracy of 2%, it means it will weigh to within 600kg.

If a machine has an accuracy of 2% but a capacity of 15,000kg then it will weigh to within 300kg.

Both machines have the same accuracy statement but the lower capacity machine will offer twice the accuracy

And weighing your vehicle on a system that was only accurate to within 600kg would leave it very vulnerable to a prosecution for overloading.

We strive for the greatest accuracy we can when designing a system. Our dynamic axle weighbridge for instance can achieve an accuracy of 0.25%. With a capacity of 20,000kg, more than enough to weigh the heaviest vehicle on the road, that means an axle will be weighed to within 50kg.

Some manufacturers like to muddy the waters by quoting OIML Class numbers or even not quoting an accuracy figure at all.

So how accurate is your axle weighing system? If you think we can help check for you then we’d be happy to do so.

It might prove to be an eye opening exercise.

You’ve got to know what you’re doing with weighpads.

We had another interesting call the other day from a long standing customer. 

Having invested heavily in our OnBoard Axle Load Indicators to avoid overloading, he was naturally perturbed to be told by someone that the front axle on a 3-axle rigid was apparently overloaded even with the vehicle empty.

Keen to establish the facts we sent a trained engineer with a set of calibrated weighpads to ensure that all was well. Sure enough, we found nothing amiss with the OnBoard Indicator working well and displaying all of the axle weights accurately.

Certainly the front axle was heavy with a large crane mounted just behind the cab but even at full load it was still legal.

One interesting aspect was the amount of apparent overload; a tonne is quite a significant difference between what was being indicated and what the customer had been told the axle weighed. Given that considerable time and effort had been taken to design the vehicle prior to it being ordered it seemed unlikely that the calculations were out by such a wide margin.

Upon investigation we discovered that a third party had weighed the vehicle using a set of portable weighpads .This inevitably worried our customer as we had set his OnBoard Indicator up using a set of weighpads, standard procedure when we are calibrating a new system.

To set the customers mind at ease we arranged for the vehicle to be weighed at a calibrated enforcement axle weighbridge  and, sure enough the weights obtained there proved that the front axle wasn’t overloaded.

Portable weighpad. Is it being used correctly?

The conclusion we all drew was that the third party who had weighed the vehicle had done it incorrectly; not unusual if, as many people do, the weighpads are used incorrectly by simply placing them on the ground and parking an axle on them.

It’s more complex than that and you have to know what you are doing.

Having satisfied our customer that his OnBoard Indicator was correct and that we had correctly set it up using our weighpads we have now arranged for the other company to be trained in how to operate weighpads properly and avoid any future issues.

Regular visitors to this blog will know that the subject of weighpads and their potential pitfalls comes up quite often. Weighpads are an excellent tool that have many uses but they have to be used in the right circumstances and in the right way if they are to provide accurate information.

Van overloading - a hot topic

Some recent research by Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles found that nearly half of van drivers are driving their vehicles overloaded.

They also discovered that about half of companies don’t monitor the weights on their vehicles and that more than half of drivers don’t know their maximum weights.

You can read the full item here.

Overloading a van has a detrimental effect on nearly all the major components – brakes, steering, clutch, tyres and suspension. In short it’s highly dangerous and might even invalidate the insurance should the van be involved in an accident.

During some of our own research into overload logging software, we ran a 3.5t van fully laden for a couple of weeks. The driver, a highly experienced Class 1 driver, noted how unstable the vehicle felt and how unresponsive the steering was.

In short, he didn’t feel safe driving it even though it was just within its design limit and he was used to driving much bigger vehicles.

But if the statistics are to be believed then well over 1 million of these vans could be being driven on our roads every day, possibly with the driver unaware.

Unfortunately ignorance is not a defence and with VOSA finding that 89% of the vans they stopped in 2014 were overloaded, that’s an awful lot of fines and penalty points handed out.

Fortunately not all operators rely on the ignorance defence and contact us for a solution.

No van overloading here!

The Axtec OnBoard Load Indicator is fitted to more 3.5t vans than everything else put together.

Fitted in half a day without adding any significant weight  to the vehicle Axtec OnBoard will show the driver both his axle weights and his gross weight instantly. No knobs, buttons or switches just a clear, simple, colour display showing legal weights in green, anything over 80% in amber and all overloads as flashing red.

For managers, the system can store incidences of overloads or connect to a tracking device with some able to provide information in real time.

Axtec OnBoard is inexpensive to fit and, with a unique customer calibration facility, inexpensive to own as well as no service engineer needs to visit for any routine re-setting.

And with the system fitted to his van, the driver knows at every stage during his day what the axle and gross weights are and know he’s running legally and safely. So the ‘ignorance’ defence need never have to be used again.

Who sold you that then??

 Buying the right tool for any job is important and buying an axle weighing system is no different.

If you needed to weigh a vehicle to 2% accuracy, you’d buy a weighing system that was accurate to 1% and feel pretty confident you’d made a good choice, correct?

You may be surprised to learn that that’s not always correct.

All scale manufacturers express accuracy as a percentage of the capacity of their machine. So a 10,000kg capacity weighpad with an accuracy of 1% could be up to 100kg out and still working to specification. If you had two weighpads, the pair could be up to 200kg out and still within specification.

Now consider weighing a 32 tonner one axle at a time. That’s four axle weights you’ve recorded all of which could be 200kg out. So that’s potentially an error of 800kg on the whole vehicle.

But what if you needed to weigh an unladen 32 tonner to within 2%? Assuming your 32 tonner weighs 12,000kg unladen, you need to weigh it to within 240kg.

So you need to weigh your chassis to within 240kg but you’ve been sold a system that will only weigh it to within 800kg? Sadly it happens all the time and we read about just such an occurrence only this week.

It’s something we would never do.

Is this the right system for your needs?

Contrast that with the visit we made to a site in Birmingham last week. A customer was very keen on our product and wanting the latest technology. The system would have fitted in his yard and could have produced accurate axle weights.

However, it became clear during the discussions that there were issues with the site. Turning circles, site access and similar which meant that our system wasn’t going to be the best option. So we explained the issues to him and pointed him in the direction of a company with a product better suited to his needs.

We walked away from a sizeable order.

Selling the wrong product for the task is something we would never do. We know our products, their accuracy, their pro’s and their cons, and we thoroughly investigate the customers’ needs.  And if our systems are not right for the job we will say so.

Who would you rather deal with? An organisation that will sell you anything just to make a quick buck or because they don’t have the in depth knowledge needed or one that will give you an honest opinion on what is right for your job?

We think it’s the right thing to do and means you really will get the best vehicle weighing system for your needs.