I recently took a trip to Florida for a little vacation time. The modes of travel varied for me and my family on this trip. The overall transit choices for the family included car, train, and plane. Yes, go ahead and insert your Planes, Trains, & Automobiles joke. Thankfully, our trip went much better for us than it did for poor Neal and Del many years ago.
The point I wanted to make in todays entry is to highlight all the different scales that were spotted during the trip. We at CCS always get asked, who uses scales? Well, let me sit back and try to remember all the different places that I noticed a set of scales over the past week.
SCALES FOR WEIGHING LUGGAGE INSIDE THE TRAIN STATION
As I sat in the waiting area of the train station waiting on our train to arrive I was double checking my tablet and making sure my movies and TV shows were going to play correctly on the train ride. But, as we’re walking out to hop on the train, I look over to the right and see a nice heavy duty Mettler Toledo scale platform and digital weight indicator. This MT scale could be used to weigh passengers or suitcases as they prepare to travel.
INDUSTRIAL LOCATIONS NEED SCALES FOR TRUCKS
As the train rolled through northern Florida I noticed multiple truck scales at various locations. One was a Rice Lake Survivor, one was a B-Tek Centurion and it looked like one may have been a Mettler Toledo but I’m not certain. And of course at several of these locations there were hoppers which likely included s-beam load cells with a junction box and either a digital weight indicator or some other panel mount type system. I’m sure at some point my son (and others nearby on the train) were getting tired of hearing me point these scales out. Meanwhile, for my family driving on the highway, they saw weigh stations with truck scales and they saw state troopers with portable wheel weighing scales which they keep in the trunk of their car.
SCALES TO WEIGH & MEASURE FOOD PORTIONS
It was vacation time and so of course I’m going to be hanging out at certain food establishments and eating foods I probably should stay away from. For example, at a local coffee and donut shop I saw the staff using a Taylor kitchen scale. It looked like they were using it to measure out the dough. I also saw a price computing scale being used in one of my stops. In fact, there are some buffet restaurants that actually allow patrons to fill up a plate of food from the buffet and then weigh it and charge the customers by the pound. Hopefully these scales are NTEP legal for trade devices.
BE SURE TO WEIGH YOUR SUITCASES BEFORE FLYING ON THE AIRPLANE
After the vacation, it’s time to start traveling back home to North Carolina. Rather than take the train, I’m now choosing to fly home. So, as I’m walking through the airport I looked over to the check in locations for all airlines and they each had a baggage scale. Sorry but I didn’t get close enough to catch any of the scale brands… but there is a good chance they were possibly Pennsylvania Scale Co. or Triner. But there were lots of baggage scales. I didn’t see this but remember it’s always a good idea to have a portable baggage check-in scale nearby as well and/or some type of scale that passengers can use to make sure they (and their baggage) are under any weight limits that may exist.
ALWAYS A GOOD IDEA TO KEEP YOUR PET HEALTHY AND AT A GOOD WEIGHT
After arriving home from the vacation, I needed to pick up our dog and take him to the vet because he had a problem with his eye. As we get checked in with the vet, guess what we do next? The veterinarian has our dog stand on the vet scale for a brief moment to get his weight. Turns out our dog had something similar to pink eye, so he needed eye drops three times a day for a week.
SCALES ARE EVERYWHERE
So there you have it, a look back at a few of the scale sightings that I observed over the past week. I hope this helps to better explain just how scales are used on a daily basis. These are just a few of the many examples that exist daily.