I was driving our company Duramax 3500 utility body pulling a dual axle 16' tag trailer from Rock Springs, WY to Bridgeport, TX. The whole rig is just over 20k pounds and we are DOT licensed to drive it. Anyway, I was on 287 coming out of Laramie and I didn't notice we had rolled into CO. The speed limit goes from 70 to 65mph there and instead of being 3 over, I was 8 over. Just my luck, I'm rolling on a slight downhill when a CO trooper passes me. He instantly flips on his overheads and whips around. I immediately pull over into a local greasy spoon. Before he comes up to my window he crouches down to read the data plate on the trailer. I know this is not a good sign. So when he gets to my window he asks for the usual, plus the registration for the trailer. He tells me I was going 74 in a 65. I explain about having traveled from WY into CO without realizing, but he's not really interested. He asks me if I have a CDL. I tell him no, that I don't need one for the rig. He then informs me that the trailer is equipped with 11k pound axles and that puts the GVW of the rig at 32k pounds. I am dumbfounded. My supervisor pipes up trying to talk to the trooper. The trooper asks if any of us have a CDL. All 3 of us answer in the negative.(I now have visions of us dropping the trailer and proceeding on to the next job without it: A major hassle.) The trooper heads back to his cruiser. After about 20 minutes he comes back with 3 tickets: speeding(5 over, to cut me a break), no CDL, no log book. He tells us we have to drop the trailer. Long story short, my supervisor shmoozes the Level 1 DOT Inspector/State trooper while I'm dropping the trailer and he lets us go as long as we promise to get out of CO as soon as possible and as long as I keep it to the speed limit. No problem with that.

Now you may ask, how did we end up with 2-11k lb axles when the trailer never weighs more than 10k lbs total? It turns out one of the senior managers in my company decided to beef up the axles when the old 6500 lb ones started to come to the end of their useful lives. He never consulted anyone and never checked to see if it would create a problem. Now every rig in our company(all 7 of them) is illegal and driving them puts us in jeopardy with any cop smart enough to add. What a snafu.

Our Duramax:

 

We have that at our company too. We like to call it Lack of Comunication. Company truck and trailer, I would been "Officer it's all yours" and walked to my supervisor/manager and said why is the trailer with the state boys cause it's over weight and no CDL, that would have gotten him intereseted. It's amazing what people will do. NObody talks to one another these days, i swear.

 

Another case of the ordering folks going with the "bigger is better" strategy without talking to the end users.

We don't have that trouble with our company.
They rarely order stuff.
And when they do, it's always the cheapest thing in the catalog.

 

So the VIN plate on the trailer was changed to reflect the heavier axles? Did the original manufacturer do the axle swap?

Just curious!

chaikwa.

 

Don't know, but it does reflect the new axles.

 

probaly chenged the numbers in registration. here you can register trailers at different weights.

 

my 44' enclosed has 3 8k axles, but the trailer is registered for what every i want. it has a factory tag for 18k i belive. i will get it registered at 16k and rv. but i have heard of many folks getting introuble for trailers that were over registered. i won't haul a trailer registered over 16k anymore. unless it has farm tags on it.

 

Can you please tell us what the DATA PLATED (not license plate or registration... ) GVWR of the trailer is? 22,000 lbs?

My trailer is a 21,000 lbs trailer with 7000 lbs axles. I had the GVWR reduced to 14,000 lbs and the axles reduced to 6084 lbs (2 x 235/85/16E tires per axle) on the data plate. I would be pretty upset if a DOT cop tried to tell me the GVWR was 18252 lbs. There is nothing that suggests the GVWR or GCWR should be calculated by adding the sum of the GAWRs.

 

DOT looks at the vin tag on the trailer and then your registration must match. If your trailer says 18K your reg must be 18k. I know you can pay less for lower rating but that is not the correct way. Correct way is to have the trailer man. send you a new vin tag with lower rating.

 

The trailer is 2500 miles from me right now. IIRC, the plate had the axles listed separately on two lines as 11k lbs each.

 

How did he know those were 11K axles, and why did it up the GVW? Who had it recertified for the higher GVW? I have put heavier axles under a trailer and the GVW "rating" was unchanged.

 

sorry, I started to reply, did something else, posted and then read what everyone else wrote, so I am a bit redundant!!

 

Patric has it right. Get the spec. plate on the trailer set to no more than 19k and axles at appropriate # then registration for 26k max and you are all set. Dot will write a ticket if either one is wrong. The axle on the trailer does not matter unless it is too small for the numbers. Tires can be over but not under. R C

 

19k would be too much for the trailer as the truck is rated for 10k. 15 or 16k would be more realistic. Unfortunately the field crews don't get any input into the way things are run at the home base. We just get to catch the flak.

 

you towing oilfield equipment?