The zero drifts through the day
Debris packed under the deck, a corroded mount, or a load cell cable taking in water. The bridge reads zero at 7am, minus 200 kg by noon, and the operator zeroes it again without telling anyone.
Maintenance & repair
Weighbridge Maintenance and Repair in Ghana
Planned service visits, breakdown response and genuine spare parts held in Tema - so a weighbridge fault costs you a morning, not a month of disputed tickets.
A weighbridge rarely fails all at once
When a truck scale dies outright, at least you know. The expensive failure is the slow one: a bridge that still prints tickets, still looks steady on the display, and has been reading a few hundred kilogrammes light since the last rains. Nobody stops production for that, so it runs for months. On a yard handling 50 loads a day, an undetected 300 kg error is 15 tonnes a day of product leaving uninvoiced - or, in the other direction, 15 tonnes a day you are billing customers for and cannot defend when they challenge it.
The second cost is credibility. Once your gate figure and the receiving figure at the port, the mine or the customer's plant stop agreeing, every load becomes a negotiation. Finance ends up issuing credit notes on weights nobody can verify, and a customs or invoicing query arrives with no calibration record to answer it. A weighbridge without current certificates is not evidence; it is an opinion.
Planned maintenance exists to stop that. Our engineers work from Tema and cover sites in Accra, Takoradi, Kumasi, Tarkwa, Obuasi and the northern regions, on our own installations and on equipment installed by other suppliers.
Symptoms
What a failing weighbridge looks like
If your operators recognise any of these, the bridge is already costing you money. Describe what you are seeing when you call - half of all faults can be narrowed down before anyone drives out.
The same truck reads differently on each corner
Uneven settlement of the foundation, a seized rocker-pin mount, or one weak load cell. Corner error is the fault most likely to cost you money quietly, because every reading still looks plausible.
The display jumps and will not settle
Moisture or dust in the junction box, a chafed cable, or electrical noise from a motor, welder or generator sharing the earth. Unstable readings almost always mean a connection, not a broken cell.
Cells dead or wild after a storm
A lightning surge down the cable run or through the mains. Sometimes it takes the indicator, sometimes two or three cells, sometimes only the junction box card - which is why the diagnosis has to be cell by cell.
Local conditions
Why these faults happen here
Weighbridges in Ghana age faster than the manuals assume, and always for the same handful of reasons. The rains put water where the drawings never showed it: into pit chambers with blocked sumps, into cable glands, into junction boxes whose seals were opened once and never properly closed. Water on a load cell cable does not blow a fuse - it slowly shifts the signal, which is exactly why the fault reads as drift rather than failure.
Then the ground moves. Laterite and made-up ground compacted dry soften once saturated, and a foundation that settles a few millimetres on one side puts a twist through the deck. The cells nearest the settlement carry more than their share, and you get corner errors that only show up if someone weighs the same vehicle in two positions.
Harmattan does the opposite damage. Fine dust packs the expansion gaps between deck and coping and, mixed with spillage, sets like a weak concrete. Part of every load then transfers into the civil work instead of the load cells, and the bridge quietly reads light until someone clears the gaps.
Finally, power. Supply that dips, returns hard and switches to generator is rough on indicators, and the lightning season pushes surges down long cable runs into junction boxes and terminals. A storm that takes out three cells is the single most common reason a Ghanaian site loses a full week of weighing.
Planned visit
What a maintenance visit covers
Contracts run quarterly or half-yearly depending on how hard the bridge works. A quarry or port yard turning trucks all day earns a quarterly visit; a factory gate weighing a handful of loads a day is usually fine on six months. Every visit ends with a calibration and a written report, so you have a documented history rather than a memory of the last time someone came.
See all our service lines- —Load cell test, cell by cell, with output compared against the commissioning record
- —Junction box opened, dried, cleaned and resealed; card and terminations inspected
- —Cable runs checked for chafing, rodent damage and water ingress at glands
- —Deck-to-coping gaps cleared, mounts and rocker pins inspected for seizure and corrosion
- —Foundation, ramps and drainage checked for settlement, cracking and standing water
- —Earthing and surge protection tested; indicator, UPS and printer checked
- —Calibration with certified test weights - linearity, repeatability and corner tests
- —Written report listing what was adjusted, what is wearing, and what to budget for
Breakdown response
When the bridge is already down
A weighbridge repair is only as fast as the part. That is why we stock the components that actually fail - compression load cells, junction boxes, shielded cable and indicator terminals - on the shelf in Community 10, Tema, rather than ordering them on the next container. For most common faults that turns a repair into days instead of weeks.
On site the engineer tests each cell individually, checks the junction box, the cable and the terminal, and tells you exactly what failed and why before anything is replaced. We never swap a cell and leave: replacing one cell changes the balance of the whole bridge, so the system is recalibrated with certified test weights and certified again before you weigh commercially. Genuineload cells, indicators and spares are fitted so a repair does not compromise the original build.
We repair equipment supplied by other companies as well as our own, and we refurbish older decks that are structurally sound but tired. Contract customers get priority response. Monday - Friday, 8:00am - 5:00pm - emergency service on request
Downtime maths
A contract against a week of guessing
Work out what a dead bridge costs before you decide a service schedule is expensive. A site that weighs 50 loads a day and stops is not just losing weighing - it is holding hauliers at the gate, paying demurrage on trucks that cannot be released, and either turning traffic away or dispatching on estimated weights that will be disputed by the customer later.
Estimated tickets are the hidden bill. Every load that leaves on an assumed weight is a credit note waiting to be raised, and if it is heading through the port it becomes a documentation problem as well as a commercial one. Two days of guessing usually costs more than a year of planned maintenance.
The alternative is dull and cheap: scheduled visits, a calibration certificate on file, parts already in the country, and a written report telling you which cell is drifting before it dies. Pair maintenance withscheduled calibration and certification and the bridge stays defensible all year.
Before you call
Six checks your own team can do
A useful share of callouts turn out to be debris or a physical obstruction. Run through this list first - it costs nothing, and if it does not fix the problem, the answers tell our engineer where to start.
- —Clear the gaps between deck and coping - packed dust and stones carry load the cells should be carrying
- —Look under the deck for a stone, a pallet, a dropped chain or a build-up of spillage bridging the gap
- —Check nothing is leaning on the bridge: a parked trailer leg, a hose, a barrier arm resting on the deck
- —Empty the bridge, note the zero reading, then note it again an hour later - drift tells us a lot
- —Test the same truck twice, front position and rear position, and record both figures
- —Check the junction box lid is closed and the gland seals are intact after the last rains
Questions
Weighbridge service questions we get asked
How often should a weighbridge be serviced?
Quarterly for heavy traffic - quarries, ports, cement and mine haulage. Half-yearly for lighter factory and warehouse duty. Any bridge that has been struck, flooded, hit by a storm or moved needs a check regardless of when the last visit was.
Do you service bridges you did not install?
Yes. Give us the make, the capacity and the cell type and we will assess it. Where the original parts are no longer available we advise on a compatible replacement and tell you honestly when a deck is past economic repair rather than selling you repeat visits.
Can you replace load cells one at a time?
Yes, and often that is the right call after a lightning strike takes out two or three. The condition is recalibration afterwards: a new cell has a different output to a ten-year-old neighbour, so the system must be balanced and certified again before commercial weighing resumes.
Can a repaired bridge still be trusted for trade?
It can once it has been recalibrated with certified test weights and a traceable certificate issued. Keep those certificates on file - that is the record your auditors, your customers and a verification inspector will want to see, and it is what settles a weight dispute.
We are planning a new bridge as well - can you quote both?
Yes. Many customers put an ageing bridge on a contract while a replacement is being built. Start with our guide toweighbridge supply and installation in Ghana and we will price both together.
What happens if a fault is found mid-visit?
The engineer tells you on site what failed, what it will take to fix, and whether the bridge can keep working meanwhile. Nothing is replaced without your agreement, and the written report records what was found and what was done.
Bridge down, or drifting?
Tell us the make, the capacity and what the display is doing. Monday - Friday, 8:00am - 5:00pm - emergency service on request
Put your weighbridge on a service schedule.
Send us the make, capacity and location of every bridge you run. We will propose a maintenance and calibration schedule that matches how hard you use them.