Vulcan On-Board Scales
Vulcan On-Board Scales are manufactured by Stress-Tek, Inc, which was founded in 1978 in Kent, Washington, near Seattle. Stress-Tek, Inc. originally provided professional consulting services in the fields of transducer design and experimental stress analysis. Our operations have since expanded to the design and manufacturing of state-of-the-art force measurement devices for the Vulcan On-Board Scales business. Today we provide products to the trucking markets including timber, refuse, aggregate, and general trucking, as well as solutions for the aerospace, marine, medical, heavy machinery and process controls markets.
Company details
Find locations served, office locations
- Business Type:
- Manufacturer
- Industry Type:
- Monitoring and Testing
- Market Focus:
- Globally (various continents)
- Year Founded:
- 1984
This company also provides solutions for other industrial applications.
Please, visit the following links for more info:
- Vulcan - Model R-206 - Fixed Refuse Body Scale System (6 Cell) without Mounting Brackets
- Vulcan - Model R-216 - Fixed Refuse Body Scale System (4 Cell) Without Mounting Brackets
- Vulcan - Model R-206L - Fixed Refuse Body Scale System (6 Cell) With Mounting Brackets (Leach)
- Vulcan - Model G-330 - End Dump / Dump Trailer Scale System
- Vulcan - Model R-206B - Fixed Refuse Body Scale System (6 Cell) With Mounting Brackets
About Us
Vulcan On-Board Scales are manufactured by Stress-Tek, Inc, which was founded in 1978 in Kent, Washington, near Seattle. Stress-Tek, Inc. originally provided professional consulting services in the fields of transducer design and experimental stress analysis.
Our operations have since expanded to the design and manufacturing of state-of-the-art force measurement devices for the Vulcan On-Board Scales business. Today we provide products to the trucking markets including timber, refuse, aggregate, and general trucking, as well as solutions for the aerospace, marine, medical, heavy machinery and process controls markets.
Facility
Our modern facility provides more than 45,000 square feet for our operations, including a 9,000 square foot machine shop. Our in-house machine shop has a full compliment of computer numerical control (CNC) machine tools. This capability allows us vertical integration from concept to product support.
Our quality control program incorporates standards to satisfy exacting customer requirements such as those of the aerospace and medical industries. Each load cell is tested and calibrated individually using certified test equipment, allowing load cells to be interchanged without requiring recalibration.
People
Our design team has access to the latest engineering tools and techniques allowing us to understand and address customer requirements. We have over 300 load designs and more than fifteen patents, with additional patents pending.
Vulcan On-Board Scales are supported by the best sales and service team in the industry. Our goal is 100% customer satisfaction. Our products are sold by knowledgeable dealers throughout the United States, Canada, and worldwide.
Why Scales
Electronic on-board scales are not new. They were introduced over 30 years ago into trucking applications where monitoring gross vehicle or payload weight was necessary, but platform scales were not readily available.
Over the years, improvements were added to these early electronic on-board scales. Load cells were improved and specialty load cells were developed for fifth wheels, center hangers, single points and most other types of spring suspensions. Vulcan On-Board Scales developed the double shear beam load cell, which is now an industry standard in the timber and other industries. Strain gage based air sensors were improved and added for an increasing number of air ride suspensions. Hydraulic sensors were designed for vehicles equipped with hydraulic lift cylinders. Today, Vulcan On-Board Scales can be installed on any truck or trailer with air, spring or mixed suspensions.
Based on this product evolution, the applications for on-board scales are rapidly expanding. On-board scales are found in almost every trucking industry, such as general trucking, dirt & aggregate hauling, construction & demolition, refuse, agriculture, mining, and bulk hauling. Today, truckers using on-board scales are reaping benefits far beyond just monitoring gross vehicle weight to avoid overweight fines. Given the high cost of time and equipment, on-board scales are having a dramatic impact on the efficiency and profitability of operating a truck.
- Optimize fleet efficiency by hauling the maximum legal payload on every trip without going to a platform scale.
- Eliminate overweight fines.
- Load to the maximum legal weight quickly at the loading point, without waiting in scale lines or driving to the nearest platform scale.
- Eliminate travel to certified scales.
- Reduce maintenance costs and increase vehicle life by hauling loads that the vehicle was designed to carry.
- Reduce fuel usage by hauling at capacity for less trips.
- Increased safety by keeping weight within legal limits allowing braking distance to remain constant and tracking around corners to be more predictable.
- Eliminate liability exposure due to increased braking distance from overweight vehicles.
- Measure pick-up and delivery weights such as: dirt, waste removal, recycled commodities and farm and dairy products.
- Improve customer service by providing individual pick-up or container weight to better assure your commercial customers that they are being billed fairly.
- Increase revenue by more accurately charging individual customers on pick-up and delivery operations.
- Increase driver retention.
- Improve operation efficiency by recording weights, load cycles, dump cycles and amount of haulback. With the increasing use of on-board computers, wireless communications and GPS equipment, weight information can be collected and transmitted real time back to the home office.
Truckers that consider the above benefits obtained from on-board scales, typically calculate their payback to be from 3 to 12 months. This will only shorten in the future as the cost to haul without on-board scales increases.
In the past only certain types of trucking applications were predominate users of on-board scales. Today, a significant number of new trucks and trailers in a wide range of applications come equipped with on-board scales. This will continue to expand due to the following industry trends:
- Increasing competition and the need to improve efficiency and reduce costs.
- Increasing enforcement of overweight regulations.
- Increasing need to reduce liability exposure.
- Increasing difficulty finding and retaining competent drivers.
- Increasing demand for more information.
- Increasing use of on-board computers, wireless communications and GPS equipment.