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AgridianDairy KB

Scale tickets (gross, tare, net)

Definition

Section titled “Definition”

A scale ticket is the record of a vehicle weighed on a truck scale. For feed and commodities it is the primary record of how much came onto (or left) the farm, and the basis for paying vendors, tracking inventory and measuring shrink.

  • Gross weight: the loaded vehicle.
  • Tare weight: the empty vehicle.
  • Net weight: the load itself, gross minus tare.

Tare sources

Section titled “Tare sources”

How the tare is obtained matters as much as the gross:

  • Fresh tare: the truck is weighed empty on the same trip (in loaded, out empty, or the reverse). The most accurate.
  • Stored tare: a tare recorded earlier for that truck and trailer, reused for later loads. Common for repeat haulers.
  • Default tare: a standard tare for a truck type when no truck-specific tare exists.
  • Manual tare: typed in by the scale operator, e.g. from the hauler’s paperwork.

A tare policy sets when a stored tare may be reused: for example, weigh every load, or reuse a truck’s tare for a set number of hours or days before re-weighing. Fuel, mud, snow, a driver in or out of the cab, and leftover product in the trailer all change the true tare, so stale tares move net weights.

Ticket types

Section titled “Ticket types”
  • Delivery: truck weighed in loaded, out empty (purchased feed arriving).
  • Pickup: in empty, out loaded (product leaving the farm).
  • Harvest: field-to-storage loads, often from repeated trucks with stored tares; the basis for harvested forage inventory.
  • Transfer: moves between farm sites or storage locations; no purchase.

Weighing details

Section titled “Weighing details”
  • Split or axle weighing: when the vehicle doesn’t fit on the scale, each axle group is weighed separately and gross = sum of the axle weights. Less accurate than a full-vehicle weigh.
  • Stable vs motion: a weight should be captured only when the indicator shows a stable reading. Weights captured in motion are unreliable.
  • Scale division (increment): truck scales read in steps, commonly 20 lb. No ticket is more precise than one division. NIST Handbook 44 (2026, Section 2.20) puts vehicle scales in accuracy Class III L, with a division of at least 5 lb and 2,000–10,000 divisions across the capacity (a 20 lb division on a 120,000 lb scale is 6,000 divisions).
  • Tolerance: for Class III L the maintenance tolerance is 1 division up to 500 divisions of test load, 2 divisions for 501–1,000, plus 1 division for each further 500 divisions; the acceptance tolerance (new or repaired scales) is half that (Handbook 44, Table 6 and T.N.3.2). A 50,000 lb load on a 20 lb-division scale is 2,500 divisions, so the maintenance tolerance is 5 divisions = 100 lb (0.2%).

Formula

Section titled “Formula”

Plain text:

Net (lb)      = gross (lb) − tare (lb)
Gross (split) = Σ axle-group weights (lb)
Net (tons)    = net (lb) / 2,000
Net DM (lb)   = net (lb) × DM% / 100
Receiving difference (%) = (vendor net − own-scale net) / vendor net × 100

LaTeX:

W_{\text{net}} = W_{\text{gross}} - W_{\text{tare}}
\qquad
W_{\text{gross}} = \sum_{k} W_{\text{axle},k}

Tons are short tons (2,000 lb). See as-fed vs dry matter for DM conversion.

How to pull it in DC305

Section titled “How to pull it in DC305”

Scale tickets are not in DC305. They come from the scale indicator or scale-house software, vendor tickets and invoices, and the farm’s feed inventory records. DC305 has no part in this calculation.

Typical range

Section titled “Typical range”

Herd context: US dairies receiving commodities and forage by semi-trailer or farm truck on a certified vehicle scale.

Item Typical value
Semi-trailer net load, dry commodity 23–26 tons (46,000–52,000 lb)
Silage truck net load at harvest 10–30 tons depending on truck
Tare drift for one truck across a day (fuel, mud) a few hundred lb
Vendor vs own-scale net difference, dry commodity under about 0.5%

The federal maximum gross vehicle weight on the Interstate system is 80,000 lb, or less where the bridge formula requires (23 CFR 658.17, as of Nov 2026); states may allow more on other roads or by permit. Two certified scales each within the Class III L maintenance tolerance (0.2% at 2,500 divisions) can disagree by up to about 0.4%, which is why the vendor-vs-own gap above is set at about 0.5%.

Common mistakes

Section titled “Common mistakes”
  • Stale stored tares. A tare taken with a full fuel tank, or before mud built up, shifts every later net weight. Re-tare on a schedule.
  • Wrong truck’s tare. Reusing a tare for a different trailer or truck-trailer combination.
  • Weighing in motion. Reading before the indicator settles.
  • Swapped gross and tare on pickup tickets, giving a negative or reversed net.
  • Pounds vs tons confusion, or metric tonnes mixed with short tons.
  • Paying on vendor weight only. Without an own-scale weight on each load, receiving shrink can’t be measured. See shrink.
  • Wet feeds paid as-fed. The ticket is as-fed weight; pair it with a DM test when the contract pays on DM.
  • Missing harvest tickets. Harvested forage inventory, and so silage shrink, is only as good as the harvest ticket count.
Section titled “Related”