I avoid getting onto scales at all costs. But sometimes, you’ve gotta step up for the cold, hard truth.
Recently we’ve been around two scales that we actually like. One of them is at the Heart Attack Grill on Fremont Street in Lost Vegas. No, we don’t eat there, we just like stepping on their outdoor scale (together, obviously!).
The other scale we can appreciate is the Escapees SmartWeigh scale at North Ranch RV Park in Congress, Arizona.
RV Weight Reality Check
We’ve been weighed twice before, but hadn’t rolled our rig onto the SmartWeigh scales since adding solar and satellite to the roof. Not a whole lot about our setup had changed since then, until last summer. That’s when Jim added his custom slide-out RV workstation desk to our rig.
And ever since then, I’ve been a nervous wreck, constantly wondering if the heavy desk put us over our safe RV weight limit.
Then the Universe conspired on my behalf. A couple of months ago, Escapees asked me to write a blog post about SmartWeigh. The timing was perfect. Congress, Arizona wasn’t too far off our route to Fountain of Youth, so I said “Of course!” and away we went.
We learned a lot that day, and drove away with a few considerations that may impact the way we RV. But I’m keeping those weigh-in findings under wraps for now. Escapees gets first dibs on our discoveries for an upcoming blog post. When it publishes, I’ll share it here.
We had our converted bus weighed at Sumter Oaks in Bushnell in late November of 2018. The overall weight was reasonable based on a previous weighing and some changes we had made. The weight distribution was screwy, but that was not the fault of the scales or weighmaster. In March 2020, we weighed the coach at a CAT Scale as we were departing Polk City, Florida. The coach was in as close to the exact same configuration as it was in November. The weight distribution was similar, but the coach was considerably heavier, so not sure what to believe. We weighed it a third time this past summer at a friends garage using individual wheel scales. Results were intermediate to the previous two findings, but the coach was not in the same configuration. “Person with three weighings does not know what their coach weighs.”
Thanks for sharing your experience Bruce! It’s hard to believe that sometimes these things happen but clearly they do. Sorry for the hassles.
Be Careful with the Smart Weigh! Unfortunately, I did a Smart Weigh in Bushnell, FL and then a re-weigh a couple of months later and discovered that they had made a huge mistake on the first weigh on one side…. evidently weren’t careful writing the number down or looked at the scale wrong… so I had towed for months way overweight. Sadly, it was a waste of money and I now can’t trust them to be right.
CK, I’m sorry to hear that and glad you were OK. Did you get a refund on the first weigh-in, or a comped second weigh-in?
We also “weighed in” at the Escapees park in Congress last spring. Up to that point we weren’t sure what we weighed (we thought we might be overweight, particularly on our rear axle), much less how the weight was distributed. The SmartWeigh was excellent and relieved all of our concerns – it turned out we were comfortably under our maximum and reasonably balanced, and we could reduce our tire sure pressures a bit (for a more comfortable ride). Highly recommended.
Congratulations Dave, that’s terrific! It does give you peace of mind doesn’t it?
When we had the 40 foot motorhome with it’s huge 475 CAT engine, we never worried much about weight. We aren’t the type to bring along the kitchen sink so always knew we were OK. When we downsized into a 26 foot Winnebago Aspect weight became an issue! I weighed every. single. thing. I carried out and put in the motorhome. At the end, we were right on target! And I discovered a few things we could live without next time.
Jana you get the A+ for being so conscientious. One thing I forgot to mention in my article was that our weighmaster suggested that we weigh all components of any new home improvement materials we bring on board. You went the extra mile, and it paid off. Awesome!