Comment by ChrisRR
7 hours ago
Imperial is confusing at the best of times, but couldn't they have said 24.5 tons instead of 55,000 lbs?
7 hours ago
Imperial is confusing at the best of times, but couldn't they have said 24.5 tons instead of 55,000 lbs?
Sir ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_ton
> he long ton,[1] also known as the imperial ton, displacement ton,[1][2] or British ton,[3] is a measurement unit equal to 2,240 pounds
They could have said 3300 stones stones ...
That rocks.
That's the way they like it. American road signs have mad shit like "No trucks over 15,000 lbs".
This is an is-ought inference. Americans have not been given an option and use the units they're provided with, which is a frustrating mix of everything depending on context.
Nobody seems to like it this way.
Surely they don't actually like drill bits measured in fractions of an inch, do they?
Yes, in USA the bits are in fractions and stuff you purchase will have instructions like, drill 3/8 hole for a wall anchor, or 2+1/4 hole for a door-bolt set.
The American thousands of pounds thing is even more weird than that: I buy gravel from the gravel pit. They weigh my truck and dump trailer in lbs and then charge me per ton. Everyone talks about tons: e.g. I'd call a dump truck operator and ask him to deliver 18 tons of rock, not 36,000lbs. But the weighbridge and road signs and regulations about vehicle and axle weight are always in lbs. If you only read things and never talked to other people you'd never know tons existed.
A lot of the older "no vehicles over X" signage is denominated in tons.
That's because we measure weight in tonnage.
In the EU and UK the weight of the vehicle is on the signs too [0], or the weight per axle [1].
[0] https://hgvlgvtraining.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/weig...
[1] https://freesvg.org/img/B13a.png