Weight bumping: paying for pounds that do not exist

Interstate moving charges are typically based on the weight of your shipment. That makes the scale the cash register, and federal investigators have prosecuted movers for weight bumping: assigning fraudulent weight or volume to a shipment so the bill climbs after your goods are loaded. Its cousin is the packing-materials pad: charging for boxes, shrink wrap and tape that were never used, or "materials" priced at several times retail.

The empty-truck trick

Here is how the classic version works, described to us by people who have watched it done. Your price is the difference between two weighings: the truck empty (tare) and the truck loaded. The scam happens at the FIRST weighing, before your boxes ever touch the truck. The driver eases one set of wheels off the edge of the scale, and a truck that really weighs 6,000 lbs registers 3,000. Then the loaded weighing is done honestly: 10,000 lbs, all wheels on. On paper your shipment is now 10,000 minus 3,000 = 7,000 lbs, when the truth is 4,000. You pay for 3,000 lbs of steel that was hanging off the scale.

The beauty of the trick, from the scammer's side, is that the loaded ticket is real. If you only check the second weighing, everything looks clean. The theft is in the tare.

Your rights at the scale

• You have the right to observe every weighing, including the EMPTY one, and the mover must tell you where and when it happens. Watch the wheels: every axle on the scale platform, every time.
• You can demand a reweigh before delivery. If the numbers do not match, the bill follows the reweigh. A reweigh redoes BOTH weighings, which kills the empty-truck trick.
• Weight tickets are part of your paperwork and must come from a certified scale, with the tare and gross weight on them. No tickets, no charge: keep copies with the bill of lading.
• Sanity-check the math: an average household shipment runs roughly 5-7 lbs per cubic foot. A one-bedroom "weighing" 12,000 lbs is telling you a story.

How to keep the scale honest

• Get a binding estimate after a real survey; then the price is the price and the scale games stop mattering.
• Photograph your loaded inventory and count boxes on both ends. Padding shows up in the difference.
• Question a materials line that appears at delivery which was not in the estimate; that is billed later on paper, not held over your furniture.