'Weight Bumping'--Falsifying Household Moving Weights To Increase Charges--What ICC Needs To Do

Gao ID: CED-79-75 May 1, 1979

About 1 million American households which move each year are not being protected adequately against the practice of "weight bumping" which artificially increases the cost of moving. Weight bumping is the falsifying of weights of household goods shipments to increase transportation charges.

The Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) and the moving industry agree that weight bumping is a problem; they disagree on its extent. There are no ICC regulations concerning weighmasters and scale operations and only limited regulations governing weight tickets. Accordingly, ICC must rely on state and local governments to regulate weighing activities. This reliance has serious shortcomings because of insufficient and inadequate state and local controls.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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