Legal Definitions - weighage

Weighage refers to a specific fee or charge that is collected in exchange for the service of weighing goods or merchandise.

This payment is typically required when an official or designated entity provides the equipment and labor to accurately determine the weight of items, often for purposes such as customs declarations, shipping calculations, or fair trade transactions.

Here are some examples to illustrate the concept of weighage:

• Imagine a large shipping company importing a container full of raw materials, such as bulk chemicals, through a busy port. Before the materials can be cleared through customs and transported inland, the port authority requires them to be weighed on certified industrial scales to verify the exact quantity. The fee charged by the port for this weighing service, which is essential for calculating import duties and freight charges, would be considered weighage.

• Consider a wholesale produce market where farmers bring their harvested crops, like potatoes or onions, to sell to distributors. To ensure fair pricing based on quantity, the market management provides large, calibrated scales for weighing the produce in bulk. The small administrative fee that the market charges the farmers for using these weighing facilities before their goods are sold is an example of weighage.

• A construction company orders several tons of gravel from a quarry. When the delivery trucks are loaded, they must pass over a large weighbridge at the quarry's exit to determine the precise weight of the gravel being transported. The quarry charges a specific amount for the use of this weighbridge and the associated record-keeping, which is then added to the invoice for the gravel. This charge represents weighage, as it's a payment for the service of weighing the merchandise.