This is a true story which I found especially funny because it's easy to visualize the situation.

  My ex son-in-law had this experience when he was driving long-haul 18 wheelers about 15 years ago.

  He was in the midwest on a run to California when he approached a weigh station.  From a half mile away, he could see white bits of something all about the weigh station, both sides of the interstate and in the medium strip.  When he pulled in for the weighing, he learned what had happened.

  A truck pulling an old reefer box trailer (these were the trucks made before refridgeration units were available that had the two little doors in the rear corners of the trucks (for shoving ice blocks into racks inside the trucks to keep the contents cold.

  What was "strange" was that the truck showed very close to empty on the scales and it was a sealed trailer.   The manifest furnished by the driver indicated the load was "Sporting goods" (or Sports Equipment).  Hmmmmm . . . what kind of sports equipment wouldn't weigh anything?  So, they decided to investigate.  They clipped the seal, opened the doors, and before they could get them closed again,












thousands and thousands and thousands of ping pong balls poured out of the trailer.  They used the reefer trucks because of those little doors which allowed the manufacturer to blow the ping pong balls through a large flexible hose into the trailer til' full, and then on to the packaging plant where the entire truck/trailer would be elevated and the "sports equipment" dumped into a large hopper . . . . and that's why there was a seal on the trailer.

I could definitely see that happening. DOT officers are not known for taking a driver's word on things.  :)

Years ago, my dad was pulling a load of styrofoam insulation, back when it was new to being used for insulation. His trailer was stacked to 13"6" and was loaded all the way, front to back, and tarped over the entire load. When he pulled onto the scales the officer couldn't believe the weight, so he had Dad back off of the scales so he could recalibrate them. After doing this three times, he told Dad to pull around in the back, while they shut down the scale, thinking it was defective.  :) Dad had to untarp the back end of the trailer so they could see what it was he was carrying. Net weight, 500 lbs.

Dad made that run for several months, and the officers would just wave him through when they saw him coming, unless they had a rookie in the weigh shack.  :D Then the fun began again.