The in basket: Shortly after answering a reader’s question about why long-haul trucks are often seen bypassing weigh stations on I-90, I came to wonder about the wide spot next to Highway 16 just south of the Burley-Olalla interchange, that is marked as a weigh station. I couldn’t recall seeing anything being weighed there, I first asked if it was no longer in use. Then after seeing four big trucks, a small panel truck and a passenger car there one weekday morning, with no law enforcement in sight, I suggested it seemed to be more rest area than anything else.
The out basket: State Trooper Russ Winger replied that WSPs Commercial Vehicle Division “still utilizes the area for periodic spot inspections on commercial vehicles, which includes weight checks at times.”
He added that “trucks and occasional vehicles do pull into the area when there are no officers conducting inspections. The area is wide and normally there is room for vehicles to stop, adjust a load, make a cell call, etc., well beyond the area where inspections are done.
“You can drive right through past the inspection area on the right. It is not a chronic problem and troopers will also pull into the area and check vehicles stopped there.
“It is not a place to leave a disabled vehicle, however, as it is within the Tow Zone,” meaning the prohibition imposed in 2015 of all parking on the shoulder of Highway 16.
“The same situation exists on westbound SR16 just west of the Narrows Bridge,: he said, “although that old scale area is seldom, if at all, used anymore for inspecting trucks.”
While the HWY 16 weigh stations are relics from long ago, I have had the pleasure of having my rig weighed a few years ago going both directions. Now while it only happened once on the Eastbound side, I have gotten stopped a few times on the Westbound side when I drove 18-wheelers. I drive back and forth to Tacoma to work and a couple times a year the Westbound will be open, maybe just to test their scales, but it does open occasionally. Probably when the troopers are looking for a certain truck traveling that direction and they need a reason to pull over trucks and look. But I will on occasion see a truck pulled over in the Eastbound side with a trooper with his portable scales. But for the most part those scales are used as a nightly rest area for truckers who need to rest. Any given morning and night there is trucks and vehicles parked there resting. Better to pull into their and rest then on the side of the road, where a truck can be a hazard.
The weigh station on HWY 16 was open this morning when I drove by. LOL