What Can Truck Scale Software Do For You?  

​What Can Truck Scale Software Do For You?  

All truck scales share a common problem that can be addressed by adding truck scale software programs: The need to weigh a truck twice to determine how much of its weight is the product you’re shipping or receiving. And after weighing a truck in, it’s very likely you will need to weigh another truck in or out before you weigh the first truck out. So, something needs to remember the inbound weight to combine it with the outbound weight and complete the transaction. That’s where software programs come into play.

How have Truck Scale Programs Helped Traditionally

For the last thirty years or so, the low-end solution to this problem has been a smart scale indicator, which can remember the inbound weights and recall them to print the outbound ticket. These simple truck scale programs either assign inbound trucks a short ID number, or let the operator assign a truck ID when it is inbound, then the operator enters the ID to complete the truck weighment when it is outbound. Meanwhile, other trucks can weigh in and out.

The Problem With Primitive Truck Scale Software

These primitive truck scale programs can print a ticket with the inbound, outbound, and net weights, the time and date, possibly the truck ID, but not much else. Today, most of these types of truck scale software programs can support print formats which include the name of the company, or issue the command for a ticket printer to release the paper. But these truck scale programs don’t store records, and it can be difficult to recover information if the operator accidentally uses the wrong ID to weigh a truck out. These systems also have limited storage, and trucks that weigh in but never weigh out gradually accumulate until the system runs out of memory.

Custom Software from Michelli Weighing & Measurement

Now, the truck scale software that allows this functionality usually involves some customization. For example, our customer might want to display an “exit scale” message on a scoreboard, or control a traffic light or gate. We might want to add other data selected from a list, like product or customer.

To facilitate these actions, the Michelli team can develop & install a software program that collects the truck’s other data either when it is inbound, or when it is outbound. We can even arrange for unattended operation so the driver can weigh his own truck at a kiosk. But no canned scale indicator-based system is likely to support all the features that work best for any particular installation.

Fortunately, at Michelli Weighing & Measurement, we can work with our customers to customize a truck scale software application for their particular needs. And because they are self contained, these smart scale indicators tend to be very reliable once a truck scale system is built. They don’t have operating systems and don’t have the version, update, and malware problems that personal computers do.

At the high end, there are PC-based truck scale programs which have advanced capabilities. They can have a much richer user interface for entering and verifying data, interface with multiple scales, support multiple terminals, and in some cases, even interact directly with accounting systems. All this flexibility makes these programs expensive and tricky to install and troubleshoot. Unlike the smart scales which are self-contained, these PC-based systems generally need the PC to be running and connected to work at all. But if a customer needs ultimate flexibility and data handling, we can build, install, and maintain these truck scale software systems too.

Adding Recording Capabilities & Increasing Compatibility with Truck Scale Software 

At Michelli Weighing & Measurement, we can improve significantly on these basic truck scale programs by adding a higher-end, programmable indicator. These indicators are compatible with truck scale software that enables us to collect additional data fields, like trailer number and product. These truck scale software programs let the operator browse a list of the inbound trucks in the system instead of entering the inbound code. We can also have the indicator display a verification screen before recording the transaction to minimize errors. With more advanced truck scale software, we can also force the printer to reprint the last ticket in case there is a jam, or enforce the scale returning to zero before weighing another truck to ensure accurate weighments.

The truck scale software programs Michelli customers are using can even facilitate record keeping. Now, not only can users print reports, but we can also program the indicator to serve that information via ethernet to a web browser, or upload it to a spreadsheet or database. See the SVT3 flyer linked at the end of this post for more information.