Situational Awareness
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Weight And Balance
General None Reported / Taken
Company Policy; Human Factors
While picking up cargo we noticed a discrepancy between the paperwork and actual weights. I contacted Customer Service but was unable to get a better number on the weights. Originally we were to pick up 9 racks at 15;750 LBS. The load was short shipped and only 6 racks arrived. The paperwork stated a weight of 6;424 LBS. We didn't fell this was accurate but felt confident it was under the 15;750. I made the decision to use a weight based on the original shipment. With nine racks the weight of each rack would be approximately 1;750 each; so six would be 10;500. Because even using the 15;750 number; no weight limitations or CG would be out of limits we went with the conservative figure of 10;500. Upon arriving; I had the racks reweighed and the new weight was 8;130. This had my calculated weight on the conservative side by 2;370 LBS while the shipper under estimated the weight by 1;706 LBS. There were no scales to reweigh at the departure airport. Customer Service was unable to get any better estimate from the shipper. In a perfect world the shipper would have exact weights for their products. In the future; it would be prudent to only use cargo loading facilities that had proper weighing equipment or having a calibrated/certified pallet jack with built in scale. While the on demand world does not lend itself to these things I would suggest making sure the shipper was held accountable for their weights.
DC9 Captain does not believe his cargo load has been weighed accurately and using some assumptions; increases the weight by 4;000 LBS. No accurate method of weighing the freight could be found and the estimate turns out to be conservative.