(18-05-2011, 05:19 PM)samthesidecar Wrote: If the van is overweight it's overweight, insurance would be invalid should you have an accident, and if caught in the UK a hefty fine. The number of times you have travelled is irrelevant.

As you say this will give a headache to some of the boys coming over, piles of gear on the harbour side while they shuttle stuff up to the paddock!!

This check was nothing to do with the Steam Racket by the sound of it, however, in the past they have weighed vans BEFORE boarding, mine was weighed years ago before going on the old Vomit Comet, which I if I remember right had a 3.5 tonne weight limit.

(18-05-2011, 07:17 PM)George Wrote:

(18-05-2011, 05:19 PM)samthesidecar Wrote: If the van is overweight it's overweight, insurance would be invalid should you have an accident, and if caught in the UK a hefty fine. The number of times you have travelled is irrelevant.

As you say this will give a headache to some of the boys coming over, piles of gear on the harbour side while they shuttle stuff up to the paddock!!

This check was nothing to do with the Steam Racket by the sound of it, however, in the past they have weighed vans BEFORE boarding, mine was weighed years ago before going on the old Vomit Comet, which I if I remember right had a 3.5 tonne weight limit.

Vans only got weighed at Liverpool due to the limits of the landing stage.
As I said on last nights boat was many vans, mine being the only race transporter. The van in front of me was another Iveco jammed full of PVC windows ( back doors could not be shut) I asked the question why that van was not weighed only to be told it was weighed before getting on at Heysham, well I can tell you that was pure Bull poo from the Police as I followed this van all they way through from the M6 to the boat so would have seen if it had been weighed.
For a few years now fans have been putting their bikes in the back of vans to save costs on travel to the TT, it has cost the IOMSP lost fares on riders plus bikes so they are now fighting back with the help of the Police.
I returned to the Douglas Port tonight to see if any other vans were checked by the Police when the boat docked and none were.

And just to clarify a point if a van is emptied of a bike at the port then the owner will be charged an additional frieght charge.

As said on another forum several friends used to ride down to Heysham with their bikes and load them into a mates van for the sailing over to save costs, now they won't be able to do it.

Stuck your neck out again, "George" ??

(26-05-2011, 04:21 PM)Isle of Man Harbours Wrote: Isle of Man Harbours has become aware that there is some concern over the weighing of vans on arrival at Douglas Harbour from Steam Packet vessels. I hope the following reassures anybody who has been concerned by some of the earlier comments.

Isle of Man Harbours has had a long established procedure for checking to see that overweight vehicles disembarking from Steam Packet vessels do not get on to the highway network. This procedure has only just been reviewed and was written in conjunction with the Department of Infrastructure’s Chief Vehicle Inspector. The Port Security Officer (PSO) who carried out the original vehicle check, acted entirely in accordance with normal procedure and even arranged for the duty Vehicle Examiner to telephone the driver after he had reached his destination on the Island to verify that the PSO acted properly.

Our procedure is aimed at finding overweight vehicles and giving the driver the opportunity to download the excess on to another vehicle. These drivers are also warned that if they opt to proceed they will be reported to the Police. If the vehicle is slightly overweight and within an agreed margin the driver will be warned that his vehicle is overweight and allowed to proceed. This is what happened to the original complainant.

All articulated freight trailers are check-weighed as this can be carried out easily and quickly given the relatively limited permutations of numbers of axles and gross weights and the relatively small number of vehicles involved. However, given the time and difficulty in dealing with all the other variations of commercial vehicles, from small pickups to furniture removal vans, they are chosen randomly for check-weighing. It is therefore possible that despite this procedure having been in place for several years the complainant has not been stopped previously before his recent disembarkation from Ben-my-Chree when he was stopped for a check-weigh. His van was only 40kg over weight, which is within the agreed margin for a warning, and allowed to proceed. However, the complainant was annoyed at being stopped and checked and disputed the Port Security Officer’s powers. He supplied contact details so that he could be contacted by a Vehicle Examiner. He then drove off Circus Beach and was telephoned later to be advised that the PSO had acted correctly.

Despite the information from the Vehicle Examiner it appears that he was still sufficiently annoyed to put his thoughts on the TT website but unfortunately they contained some inaccuracies. For example:
1. He was telephoned by the Department’s Vehicle Inspector and not the Police. This call appears to have been prompted by his disbelief that the PSO had the powers to stop and weigh his vehicle and was made in order to reassure him.
2. There is no database of disembarking vehicles being established for TT;
3. All incoming vans will not be stopped as this is too time-consuming and would much inconvenience disembarking drivers as well as risk delaying the ship turnaround. Instead the long-standing procedure of random checks will be maintained.

Director of Harbours

(28-05-2011, 10:58 PM)Tomcat Wrote: Interesting thread, and a bit worrying. Many race vans (LWB converted to half camper) are over the strict 3500 weight in all probability, and cover thousands of miles to race meetings over the course of every year all over the country with no problems.

OK, it may be against the law, but then so is doing 80 on an empty motorway and people don't get too bent out of shape over that. For the drivers, if you do it and take the p*** and get caught that's your lookout but what you don't expect is for the port authorities to take the place of VOSA and start policing weight limits on vehicles that will be using the roads away from the port.

I went over recently with a couple of trail bikes, had a great weekend, though the booking agent did say there was a 3000kg weight limit on the seacat, so I went to Heysham. OK no problems but if somebody had started moaning about the weight of the van the Island could kiss goodbye to any further tourist income from me, and I've spent a fair bit over the years.

In my opinion if the port authorities want to keep tabs on overloaded commercial vehicles this is par for the course, but take it easy on the tourists. Not that they will care about my opinion of course.