The Weight.

The "God Squad" struck this morning.    I was merrily chugging down the road, carting the final load from a slip site a mere 4 kilometres from the depot when a green 4x4 loomed in the mirror, red & blue lights flashing from behind the grill. Realizing that this was no April Fool's prank, but the real thing, I pulled over. "Good Morning, Sir, We would like to put you on the scales." I have written about the God Squad before. They are worse to see in your rear vision mirror than the Four Horseman Of The Apocalypse. I also realized with horror that I had become such a meticulous log book filler in, that after making sure it was squeaky clean before I left the depot, I had driven off leaving it in the office. To make things worse, as I was carting the last load before Smoko, the loader driver had enthusiastically stuffed every last bit of slipped muddy hillside onto my truck. Things were not looking good.    "We will just find a bit of level ground off the road Sir". I saw a tiny glimmer of hope."There is a pull off area at the boat ramp up the road," I volunteered. Away we went in convoy, truckies passing the other way muttering urgent warnings to each other into their CB's. They duly pulled portable scales out of their 4x4 and set about weighing the truck. It was difficult. The pull off area is very gently sloped in two directions. Twice the truck rolled off the scales.   "How about we go up to the depot" I offered helpfully, "Its got a flat sealed yard and is just up there".... hallelujah, they took the bait, and once again we convoyed off, getting closer and closer to the log book. We rolled into the yard, and once again they set about weighing the truck and checking stickers, certificates, etc.   "I better tell the boss whats happening" I said, dived into the office and grabbed the log book. They were bending over the scales calculators going, I flipped it in the window.
   "You are a tonne overweight on the back axle Sir. I am going to issue you with an off loading demand." This means you must "rearrange your load immediately to legal limits", of course having a dump truck, all I had to do was tip my load off in a corner of the yard. They sportingly waived an infringement notice which would have seen me fined,($150 to $10,000) after seeing my impeccable paperwork and clean drivers licence. Not producing a log book is a mandatory 1 month loss of licence, and a fine up to $2000.
I am a lucky, lucky, Old fart.