How much does a tipper carry? Legal payloads, body sizes and the overloading rules

Ask a tipper driver what his vehicle carries and you get one number. The body-builder's plate gives another, in cubic metres. The registration certificate gives a third, and that one is the law.

The legal answer is a subtraction. Take the gross vehicle weight on the registration certificate, which is capped at 28 tonnes for a three-axle, 10-wheel rigid tipper and at 35 tonnes for a four-axle 12-wheeler. Take off the unladen weight printed on the same certificate. What is left is the payload.

Three weights on the registration certificate

Gross vehicle weight, GVW, is the most the vehicle and its load may weigh together on the road. Unladen or kerb weight is the vehicle as it stands empty, body included. Payload is the difference.

We have not printed kerb weights here, and that is deliberate. They vary by make, model and wheelbase, and most of all by the body: a rock body in heavy plate weighs more than a box body built for coal. Read the RC of the vehicle in front of you.

Gross weight limits for rigid trucks since 2018

The limits come from notification S.O. 3467(E) of 16 July 2018, issued under section 58 of the Motor Vehicles Act, which replaced the axle weights of 1996. It works axle by axle: 11.5 tonnes on a single axle with four tyres, 21 tonnes on a tandem, 27 tonnes on a tri-axle. The two-tyre front axle was 7.5 tonnes in the July text and was amended to 7 tonnes by S.O. 3881(E), a change MoRTH's advisory dates to 6 August 2018. Add up the axles and you have the truck.

Sixteen-tyre, five-axle tippers with a twin-tyre lift axle appear in manufacturers' catalogues at 47.5 tonnes. Whatever the table says, a vehicle is held to the GVW on its own RC.

Body volume is not payload

Tipper bodies are sold by volume. Catalogue options on a 28-tonne chassis run 14, 16, 18 and 20 cubic metres, and the larger ones suit lighter cargo such as coal. A load either cubes out, meaning the body is full before the weight limit, or weighs out, meaning the limit arrives with the body part empty. Rock and aggregate weigh out. A body sized for coal will be overloaded with stone long before it looks full.

Crushed aggregate behaves the same way, and its density shifts with size, grading and moisture. Take it from your own weighbridge, not from a table. Converting tonnes, cubic metres and brass shows how.

The overloading penalty under section 194

Section 194(1) of the Motor Vehicles Act, as amended in 2019, sets the fine for exceeding the permitted weight at Rs 20,000 plus Rs 2,000 for each tonne of excess load, with liability for off-loading charges on top. The proviso is the part that hurts a programme: the vehicle is not allowed to move until the excess has been removed. A tipper 5 tonnes over is Rs 30,000, plus a heap of stone at the checkpost that somebody has to send a second vehicle to collect.

Two neighbouring sub-sections catch the usual dodges. A load projecting beyond the body at the sides, front, rear or in height is Rs 20,000 under section 194(1A). Refusing to stop for weighing, or shedding load before the weighbridge, is Rs 40,000 under section 194(2). States may fix their own compounding amounts under section 200, so the figure on a challan can differ.

The same 2018 notification allows a tolerance of up to 5 percent in gross vehicle weight when compliance is checked. Treat it as room for a weighbridge that reads slightly differently and a load that got rained on. It is not 1.4 tonnes of spare payload on a 28-tonne truck.

Why overloading is a false economy

The case for overloading is that the trip is being paid for anyway. The case against is everything that follows.

• One fine and one detained vehicle cancel the gain from a great many heavy trips.
• The excess comes off wherever the vehicle was stopped, so the road head gets a short load, late.
• Axles, springs and tyres are built for the registered weight. Run above it daily and they fail early, usually loaded and usually halfway along the haul.
• Haul roads and village approach roads break up faster under heavier axles, and a broken road slows every tipper on it, the legal ones included.
• Weights stop agreeing. The dispatch slip, the transit pass and the receiving weighbridge show three figures, and month-end reconciliation becomes a dispute.

Haulage paid per tonne tempts everybody in the chain to load heavy. The only control that works is a weighbridge at the loading point.

How we load

Every load leaving one of our plants is weighed at dispatch on a calibrated weighbridge, and the slip travels with the tipper. The dispatch weight is the billed weight, so the gross weight on the road is a record made before the vehicle reaches a checkpost, and nobody gains from a heavier body. That applies to every one of our 55 tippers.

When you turn a monthly quantity into trips, use the payload from the RC and not the size of the body. Working out tipper numbers from cycle time picks up from there, and bulk haulage on our own fleet is quoted per tonne on the weighed figure.