1-888-976-5423

Burlington Post file photo of a dump truck

Burlington Post file photo

Halton Regional Police has laid a number of charges after stopping a large truck loaded with dirt and shale that it says was well overweight.

Officers with the Commercial Vehicle Motor Safety Unit pulled over the truck Monday mid-morning as it travelled west along Dundas Street through Burlington.

The vehicle was taken to Kerncliff Park in Burlington and weighed with portable scales used by Halton police.

Const. Pat Martin of the commercial vehicle unit said the tri-axle truck is rated for a loaded weight of about 34,000 kilograms but tipped the scales at around 42,000 kg — 7,700 kg (16,940 lbs.) overweight.

“That’s grossly overweight and it becomes a safety issue. That’s part of the scourge we have with (some) trucks in Halton. It’s an issue throughout the region,” said Martin.

Another truck had to be brought in to transfer some of the cargo until a legal weight limit is achieved.

Vastly overweight trucks, he said, means it takes a much longer distance for the vehicle to stop, can put too much pressure on vehicle mechanisms or infrastructure that can lead to failure or breakage and also can damage roadways.

A sharp-eyed officer spotted the vehicle Monday and directed it to pull over, he said. It had loaded up at a site in Oakville south of Dundas Street near Bronte Road and was en route to a Waterdown dump site.

The habitual offenders are usually trucks coming from independent home construction sites. Those sites don’t usually have weigh scales and the operator is trying to minimize the number of truck trips to dump sites, to save money on transportation costs, said Martin.

He noted that gravel trucks coming from pits aren’t often the culprits regionally because many of them use scales.

Martin said they come across so many of these cases that the unit officers can usually tell just by looking at a truck that it is likely to be over the legal weight limit.

He said the worst case he ever heard was a truck being 10,100 kg overweight in 2012.

In Monday’s incident, the male truck driver was issued three tickets under the Highway Traffic Act for three different alleged weight category infractions.

The owner of the truck, a Hamilton company that Martin said the commercial vehicle unit has dealt with before, also received three tickets for weight infractions.

The three HTA tickets carry fines totaling about $1,500.


Source: insideHALTON.com