My home state of Oklahoma just opened the first of eight new weigh stations April 27th and was very proud of the fact it nailed its 
first overweight big rig within an hour of its opening. State officials would only say the truck was significantly over the 80,000-pound gross vehicle weight limit at the new $11 million port of entry, located just south of the Kansas-Oklahoma state line on I-35. Oklahoma officials also are very excited that the next new weigh station will be opening soon on I-40, in Western Oklahoma just east of the Texas state line. This weigh station will “only” cost $8.7 million.
The Oklahoma Department of Transportation and other Okie bureaucrats are very excited and can’t wait to get the all eight new port of entries in operation and start racking in the dough. Afterall, it’s going to take a lot of fines to cover those millions and millions of dollars to build these weigh stations. These new facilities also will be equipped with a lot high tech equipment ranging from weigh-in-motion that weighs big rigs at highway speeds (at least on I-35); license plate readers; automatic checks of truck registration and safety rating, among many other features.
Oklahoma officials cite the need for replacing 50-year-old existing weigh stations to protect the state’s investment in highways, bridges and city streets, as well as making the roads safer for motorists.
These are fine, good and honorable goals. Let’s just make sure these are the true goals, and that they are not tempted to start issuing fines, and putting truckers out-of-service for less than honorable reasons. We all know, safety inspectors can be very picky and cause a lot of problems for drivers, even for minor infractions. I’m not saying this will happen, but when there’s bills to be paid to help justify these new ports of entry, one never knows.