Just the ticket for your weighbridge needs

The importance of a secure, up-to-date weighbridge ticket cannot be underestimated. Aidan Godfrey looks at the common problems of accurate weight recording, and how these problems can be overcome


The main reason an organisation installs a weighbridge is for accurate weight recording of a road vehicle. The cost to a local authority or business for a modern approved and tested weighbridge can be many thousands of pounds, but it is an essential purchase for an efficient cost-conscious operation. Usually the last part of the installation of a weighbridge is the design of the legal document that records weights, dates and times of the transaction – this document is the weighbridge ticket.

All weighbridges give the operator a facility to record the weight transaction in a hard copy form. On a traditional standalone weighbridge ticket printer, this usually consists of an accurately produced ticket with three copies – one to be kept by the site operator, another for the haulier and one for the destination of the vehicle, either a customer buying goods or a waste site. Tickets can be any number of copies from one part to five, but three is used 90% of the time.

A record of data

Traditional weighbridge tickets have space on them for extra information to be added by hand, such as customer/supplier, description of the load, haulier/vehicle registration, driver’s/weighperson’s signatures and a comments box for any unforeseen problems with the load. For computerised weighbridge systems, a continuous sprocket hole ticket can be produced. These tickets are again usually three part, but instead of a hand written section the computer will fill in all the required information. Many such systems exist and can be tailored to each end users specification, but most usually use a 5.5”x 9.5” continuous ticket.

All weighbridge tickets regardless of type need to have certain information on them. This includes the operator’s name, address, contact numbers and certificate information that is relevant to your business such as a waste carrier’s licence or waste transfer station licence numbers. If you operate a public weighbridge it is advisable to add a separate box headed ‘public weigh’ – this is for adding the price charged for the weigh and the operator’s VAT details, which should be shown. It should also include the method of payment. All public weighbridges should publish their manned times and it is a good idea to mention these on your ticket.

Many organisations now incorporate the duty of care information on their weighbridge ticket. At Pollards Weighbridge Tickets we now produce a combined duty of care note/weighbridge ticket for all types of weighbridge. We keep close to all legislation relating to weighbridge tickets, and if necessary change our tickets automatically if a legal requirement occurs, such as European waste code (EWC) listings.

Advances over the years

Weighbridge tickets have come a long way in the past 50 years. In the 1950s and 1960s a simple card was used to record a weight via a mechanical scale. Today, all recording of weights is done by electronic systems, and as the hardware has improved so has the weighbridge ticket. At Pollards we produce a fully secure and all systems compatible weighbridge ticket. Features include the copyrighted ‘securiticket’ and ‘securiseal’.

These two innovations have effectively made weighbridge tickets tamper-proof.

Securiticket is a cheque-book style screen placed on the print-out area of the ticket. Once the transaction has taken place if anyone tried to remove the printed weight information they would also remove the securiticket screen, thus proving the ticket had been tampered with. Securiseal is the latest addition to Pollards’ tickets. This four-colour patch at the bottom of the ticket makes reproduction for fraudulent purposes very expensive and difficult to do.

Modern weighbridge ticket printers are sensitive machines and many operators have found in recent times that their tickets are not working as well in newly purchased equipment than they did in their old one. After extensive trials and consultations with paper manufacturers, we have now developed weighbridge tickets to overcome all the common problems that can be found with tickets.

Trouble-free solution

Problems such as the print not going through all copies, machines not accepting the ticket, and new ticket printers printing much slower than the ones they replaced, are now all solvable quickly and permanently. A weighbridge ticket could be the most important document in your operation – with a correctly manufactured and legally binding ticket, it could also be the least troublesome.

Aidan Godfrey is weighbridge ticket manager at Pollards Weighbridge Tickets

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