Weighing In

Overweight. Not healthy to be overweight. Harvard reports that roughly two out of three U.S. adults are overweight or obese (69 percent) and one out of three are obese (36 percent). Statistics Canada provides this infograph on obesity in Canadian adults.

I can’t find any data on coaches that are overweight. I have encountered rigs that are way over their weight limits but owners seem to fall under three camps with respect to weight. One group knows with a high degree of accuracy the weight of their coaches. Another group has a rough idea. And the last group has no idea.

When we were at the Newmar factory we had the service technicians perform corner weights for our coach. The results:

This was the first time in almost three years that we had an accurate weight for our coach. The weight included 75 gallons of fuel, 60 gallons of water, zero gallons of grey and 15 gallons of black. We were fully loaded with cargo. The weight did not include any passengers.

Prior to the corner weights, we only had a rough idea of our weight. We used the CAT weigh scale. This one was taken just after we took delivery of our coach in June of 2016.

It wasn’t too bad for a rough idea. We did several checks each year to ensure that the coach was not overweight.

Corner weights are best to determine loading and balancing on each axle and on each side of the coach. We were pleasantly surprised at the balance of weight on our coach.

A CAT weigh scale is better than not knowing the weight of your coach. You will know whether or not you are riding safely based on the Gross Vehicle Weight Rating. Without any baseline, you are simply guessing.

There is an app that you can download for your smartphone that can make the process of weighing in at a truck stop much easier. The cost is nominal, especially when you consider the danger of running an overweight  rig.