We’ve all seen reports in various stories about how X lbs of food or water have been collected and shipped for this project. It could be a standard charity event or it could be something like the catastrophic hurricane that we recently saw in the western NC mountains. These stories got me to thinking about how agencies or groups of folks are able to determine the weight of all these donations? Often it involves various types of weighing scales that we will take a look at below.
Of course it goes without saying that our thoughts and prayers go out to the folks affected by these devastating events. We donate every year to Samaritans Purse and feel they do a wonderful job. Part of what makes this Helene event so challenging is the location that is impacted. The North Carolina mountains are beautiful but they are not the easiest place to navigate through in perfect weather. That becomes especially challenging once you have record levels of rain washing everything out. Roads, bridges, houses, power lines, you name it…. just washed away. You’ve probably seen many of the videos and pictures. It’s unbelievable to see. Unfortunately it’s going to take a long time to rebuild this beautiful area. Thank God for all the wonderful folks who have volunteered their time, private helicopter pilots, and just regular everyday folks who have donated supplies or money.
During the past week we’ve heard stories about a certain amount of water or supplies being delivered, often by helicopter. How are they able to determine how many pounds of items have been donated or shipped? Often the easy answer is a simple shipping scale like the Brecknell PS400 Slimline. You probably can find similar type scales in your local office supply store as well. These aren’t very expensive and deliver pretty accurate results for quick action type events like making sure how many supplies can be placed on a helicopter for emergency delivery. This is important because helicopters have limits to how much weight they can carry.
Many of the office store shipping scales have a capacity of around 400 pounds. What happens if you need to start weighing boxes that are in the 600 lb to 1000 pound range? An industrial style Brecknell 3900 LP bench scale might be the right item for that. These bench scales often have a weighing platform of around 18″x18″ and that usually fits most boxes. It’s ok for the box to overhang the scale platform a little, as long as the box isn’t touching the floor.
To cumulatively keep track of the weight of the items donated you could weigh the items and then write down the weight of the items donated or you could possibly use a scale that has accumulation type functionality, or you could place the donation box on top of a 4×4 platform scale for a running total of the pounds donated.
Of course once the weights go beyond 5000 or 10,000 pounds, the scales needed have to be truck scales. There are several different types of vehicle scales available for projects like this and that would depend on the location and what process you’re looking to follow. In other words, if you have a location with limited access, it will be hard to put a 70′ long scale there. But you could possibly put portable wheel weighers or axle scales there instead. Conversely, if you are headquartered at an airport in the foothills, you could possibly put a 70 foot long portable truck scale at that location for weighing trucks delivering supplies to the mountains.
Hopefully as each day passes, relief efforts will get to the folks who truly need it and lives can be saved. It’s gratifying that our specialty, weighing scales, can play a small but critical part in the overall process of counting donations and packing donations on trucks or helicopters.