A Weighty Weigh-In

RAY: This came rather recently from a fellow named Josh Kokendolfer and he says, "This is a true story." Of course, because it was a true story I had to obfuscate it.

It was a brisk December morning. A co-worker and I had a simple job to do that day: clean out the job site and take the trash to the local landfill. And we had an F 350 pickup that was outfitted with a dump-truck bed. We filled it up and headed out. When we arrived at the landfill we pulled the truck onto the scale that weighed our vehicle and the landfill lady waived us through.

We unloaded and headed back out to the scale. Once again our truck was weighed. I informed the madame of the landfill that we would return in a few hours with a second load and she grunted at me as I headed back to the truck. Now before getting into the truck I noticed that one of the back tires was low. I decided to stop at one of the local gas stations to check it out and fill all the tires just in case.

Well after lunch we loaded the truck a second time at the site and headed back to the landfill. Everything went just like the first time. After we were weighed on exiting, I went to pay the bill. As the lady stamped paid on my bill I headed back to the truck. My co-worker looked at the paperwork and noticed something strange.

The first time we left we weighed 6,480 lbs. And the second time we exited we weighed 6,440 lbs - a difference of 40 lbs. We were being charged for an extra 40 pounds of trash that we didn't have. I immediately stormed into the office to complain and explain the situation. She grinned and said, "There's nothing wrong with our scales." Well, if that's the case, what happened?

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[ Car Talk Puzzler ]