Bagged nut under weight

[farmgineer]

Just had a bag of nuts off the mill, should be 20kg. It felt a bit light so I checked it, 16kg! Checked the others, closer to 19kg... That could be my scales... Anyone else noticed anything similar, do they always under sell?

Bit miffed tbh, there's no margin in farming anyway but you would at least expect to get what your supposed to be paying for.

 

[TomD]

Firstly have you spoken to the supplier of this feed ?

 

[farmgineer]

Yes I have spoken to them, taking the underweight bag to get it swapped on Monday.

 

[Matthew Britton]

But they are all underweight by the sounds of it! They ought to have a visit from trading standards, if every bag they produce is 250grams light then that is making them quite a large fraudulent profit over the course of a year! If every bag is over a kilo light then that would be massive. These things should be checked regularly to stop us getting screwed, don’t take the mills word for it.

 

[7610 super q]

Bit like the 1 ton bags of builders sand that seem to weigh 800kg +/- 5%........
Anything that leaves the farm has to be weighed with calibrated scales. Ever get the feeling you're in the wrong industry ?

 

[Matthew Britton]

I think a calibrated weigh bridge or scale of some sort on most farms would pay for its self a lot quicker than most would think just by only paying for what is delivered rather than what they say it is on the ticket! fert is the same.

 

[Purli R]

My mate used to sell reclaimed building stone in ton tote bags,could be any weight over a ton but couldn"t be a kg under!

 

[Netherfield]

Should weigh over 20kg including the bag weight.

Yes I have spoken to them, taking the underweight bag to get it swapped on Monday.

Taking it back, no way , get them out to you.

 

[Netherfield]

Curiously, I used to buy a layers feed to our specification. Bibby's made in 3 tonne batches, so I'd to order in multiples of that so 3,6,9,12 tonnes or so

Order of say six tonnes would sometimes be 5.7 tonnes when delivered, could never get a straight answer where the other 300 kgs had gone to, this spec was not made for anyone else so no excuse there. They would argue that you're only paying for the weight on the ticket, my argument was, what is missing from the two batches, because it makes the whole lot out of balance protein wise.

 

[Al R]

I worked at a farm that bought a lot of Nitram in tonne bags, we also had a weighbridge on 6 month calibrations due to a lot of selling over it and used to quite often weigh bags of nitram when putting into the spreaders. Bags would vary from 950-1030kg BUT the fertiliser was bought as full artic loads weighed so not 26x 1000kg bags it would be 25.960kg as an example.
Bit like buying trailer loads of weighed corn, you only buy what is on the weighbridge and not a guesstimate..

 

[Plain steer]

If a mill is selling 19kg instead of 20kg they can undercut it’s competitors by 5% and still make as much money very good business but as bent as they come

 

[Al R]

If a mill is selling 19kg instead of 20kg they can undercut it’s competitors by 5% and still make as much money very good business but as bent as they come

It’s not only illegal but it’s just as illegal to sell 21kg of product as 20kg as it is to sell 19kg as 20kg

 

[Derrick Hughes]

Has your scale been checked with weights and measures
And do they not sell cake by the bag with an appropriate weight ?

 

[neilo]

Is there a legal tolerance on weight? 19kg instead of 20 is 5% under. It may be within legal tolerances?

Iirc protein is allowed to be within 10% of that declared, and I suspect some mills will take full advantage of that. One more reason I don’t even get quotes from any of the national compounders, or consider any feed from buying groups were an ‘expert’ has arranged the spec & quotes, usually from those same companies.

Is weight allowed the same tolerance?

 

[Guiggs]

Bit like the 1 ton bags of builders sand that seem to weigh 800kg +/- 5%........
Anything that leaves the farm has to be weighed with calibrated scales. Ever get the feeling you're in the wrong industry ?

Building sand/ gravel/ ballast used to be in 1 tonne bags but for years now merchants have been selling " bulk bags" and somewhere they will have a notice/ disclaimer stating their bags will weigh a minimum of 800kgs / 840kgs usually.
I had a few bags of type 1 for a job and they were obviously weighed out and bagged up during a very wet day, I only got 6 wheelbarrows full from one bag.

 

[Sid]

Is there a legal tolerance on weight? 19kg instead of 20 is 5% under. It may be within legal tolerances?

Iirc protein is allowed to be within 10% of that declared, and I suspect some mills will take full advantage of that. One more reason I don’t even get quotes from any of the national compounders, or consider any feed from buying groups were an ‘expert’ has arranged the spec & quotes, usually from those same companies.

Is weight allowed the same tolerance?

Your correct. 10% of 20% cake could be an 18%!!
we buy our cake on fixed formulation But pay for that.

 

[Al R]

Building sand/ gravel/ ballast used to be in 1 tonne bags but for years now merchants have been selling " bulk bags" and somewhere they will have a notice/ disclaimer stating their bags will weigh a minimum of 800kgs / 840kgs usually.
I had a few bags of type 1 for a job and they were obviously weighed out and bagged up during a very wet day, I only got 6 wheelbarrows full from one bag.

840/ 6 = 140kg you must have better tyres on your barrows over there!

 

[Guiggs]

840/ 6 = 140kg you must have better tyres on your barrows over there!

Got better everything over here
The excess water had obviously made its way out by the time it was delivered.

 

[charlie77]

Is there a legal tolerance on weight? 19kg instead of 20 is 5% under. It may be within legal tolerances?

Iirc protein is allowed to be within 10% of that declared, and I suspect some mills will take full advantage of that. One more reason I don’t even get quotes from any of the national compounders, or consider any feed from buying groups were an ‘expert’ has arranged the spec & quotes, usually from those same companies.

Is weight allowed the same tolerance?

Yes they are allowed a tolerance of 5 %

 

[Pistonbroke]

I had some bulk bags to fill with firewood,some left from ewe cake we bought last year and some spare from a neighbour who had ewe cake from another local merchant. Ours had weights written on them from 490 to 500 kg. Neighbours bags were obviously smaller bags but their weights were 520 to 535kg. Heavy cake or dodgy firm?