Working with Industrial Scales in the Los Angeles, CA Region
Whether your customers are truckers passing through your wholesale bulk yard, international freight shipper seeking storage solutions, or cross country shuttling of commodities, all of these require the use of accurate and reliable weights and measures. Your facilities may already be outfitted with industrial scales, but it’s never a bad idea to brush up on the tech talk surrounding a core aspect of your industry.
Types of industrial scales
There are a few different types of scales available for the larger-item market, but the two main are hanging scales that measure from above, and platform scales that measure from below. Both rely on a system of tension recording to calculate weights. Hanging types are often used in conjunction with large cranes, while platform types are utilized on the over-the-road, trucking industry. No matter the type, they are durable pieces of equipment that need to be reliable and well calibrated. To ensure this is the case, each used in a commercial sense must have the proper certification.
NTEP certification
For purposes of industrial use, and therefore use in relation to a business, you will be required to select a scale that has the NTEP certification in order to use it legally. Whether it is the truckers coming through your wholesale operation for bulk items, or the shipping freight by weight arm of your business, a true reflection of weight is required in order to gauge exactly what the cost of doing business is. The NTEP certification is issued by the federally underwritten National Conference on Weights and Measures to verify that the device you are using meets the standards for accuracy in weight reporting, and therefore, you have credibility for charging a fee based on the exact recording of the scale’s indicator readings.
Online versus ground sales
Quite simply, an online supplier for industrial scales will have a much better selection, and unless you are within a short distance from one of the few store-front businesses that sell them, you would need to travel for quite a ways to view what was on the shelf. Looking for platform scales online, you have a much wider variety of products to choose from, and an attractive array of prices to work from. Online sales also have the advantage of simple access to customer feedback, while an on ground store simply provides you the opinion of the salesman.