Expected traffic and downtime

If I had to point to the worst mistake that most companies make when designing and building their receiving portion of their operation is the lack of planning for traffic and downtime. If a company weighs more than 25 trucks per day it is cost effective to purchase two scales versus one. The reasons for this are:
Provides self checking – With two scales weights can be checked on both scales to determine if they are the same. If they are then it can be safely assumed that the weights should be correct. The greatest problem with one scale is debris builds up causing the scale to weigh light resulting in the loss of thousands of dollars over the lifetime of the scale.
Bottlenecking – Single scales have a tendency in peak usage times to cause traffic jams at the scale. Although this can seem minor it can cause higher purchase prices, higher labor rates for trucking and less trucking companies willing to deliver to a site.
Downtime – Even in a perfect world with the best engineered and installed truck scale there will always be downtime due to repairs, maintenance and calibration. With one scale there is no backup and few companies are willing to accept an unknown, untested scale’s weights from down the road.