Many customers purchase a floor scale system either online or from their local scale company. But, not many folks truly understand all the factors that affect the total price that is listed for the actual floor scale package. In today’s entry we are going to take a detailed look at the factors that determine the total floor scale system costs.
For our entry today we’re going to focus on the standard four foot wide by four foot long scale platform with five thousand pound capacity just to keep it simple and consistent. A floor scale system consists of the floor scale, digital weight indicator, setup and calibration, and many times the freight costs. A typical good quality 4×4 scale should likely be priced around $1000 or so based on our 2025 numbers. Scales below this price are typically cutting corners and are not designed for long term use in our opinion.
FLOOR SCALE
If you’re buying a floor scale system then you obviously need to buy the floor scale itself. The industrial floor scale is a painted steel platform with (4) load cells and a summing card. We’ve written about platform scales for many years and I think we’ve listed just about all the different ways that manufacturers (mostly overseas) cut corners in order to offer a low cost floor scale. The common size floor scales like 4×4 sizes are often mass produced which can lower the costs. The load cells in each platform ideally will be manufactured by reputable providers. One way to lower costs is to have load cells with little or no writing on them.
Platforms built in the United States are often much more expensive than platforms built overseas. Unfortunately, it would take A LOT of tariffs to completely level this playing field and I don’t see that ever happening. So, if you’re looking to cut costs, you’ll need to buy an imported floor scale. If you are looking to be patriotic, choose something like a B-Tek Clydesdale or Pennsylvania 6600.
DIGITAL SCALE READOUT
A floor scale isn’t very useful without a display to actually show the scale weight. Most standard floor scale systems utilize a simple entry level style weight indicator like the TI-500E or the LP7510A for example. These displays show the weight but don’t have very many bells and whistles. They are also either ABS plastic or painted steel. If you need a more advanced weight readout or a scale display that is IP69K rated stainless steel, it will cost more money.
SETUP AND CALIBRATION
When examining the cost of a floor scale system, one factor that often gets overlooked is the cost to setup and calibrate a floor scale to the digital weight indicator. Contrary to what some of you may think, you don’t just connect a scale controller to a floor scale. In most cases, if you are adding a weight display like the TI500E to a floor scale, the process would go something like this.
First you would connect the homerun cable of the TI500E to the floor scale summing card. This would involve placing the wires into the correct + Excitation, – Excitation, + Signal, & – Signal locations on the board. Then, you would go through the settings on the TI500E starting at F1 and enter things like the graduations, filtering, decimal points, zero cal and span cal. You would need to use an accurate weight to calibrate the scale, ideally either 500 lb or 1000 lb of certified test weights. You also want to step on each corner of the scale platform to make sure the scale is displaying the same weights on each corner. If not, you may have to trim (adjust) on the summing board to fine tune the scale.
As you can see, this is not a simple three minute process. It takes quite a bit of time to setup and calibrate a floor scale system. That is why many scale manufacturers charge several hundred dollars to do this.
FREIGHT COSTS
Depending on where you’re shopping for floor scales, you may see the freight listed as “free shipping” or you might see some type of calculator to estimate freight costs. We’ve shipped a lot of floor scales over the years and we’ve never had a freight company yet be willing to ship a scale for “free” so the truth is when you see free shipping listed, it simply means the freight costs are included in the final costs. Assuming you are shipping to an industrial location, typical 4×4 scale freight costs are usually around $200 to $400. This often depends on the weight of the pallet and how far the scale is shipping. If you don’t have a business location and/or need a liftgate it could add another $100 + to the shipping charges.
FINAL THOUGHTS
We hope you enjoyed this entry about how the price of a floor scale system is calculated. There are really only a few ways to shave the costs of a floor scale. Imported floor scales will be cheaper but you have to be careful because there are good quality imported scales and there are ones we would refer to as junk. If you’re curious about the quality of certain scales you see online, contact our customer service team and they will be happy to give you our opinion on what scales we recommend. We’ve been offering floor scale systems for decades so we know the top choices and we know the ones to stay away from!
The weight indicators that most floor scale systems utilize are already entry level so there often isn’t much room to lower the price on those. The setup and calibration is a somewhat timely task that often takes longer than you realize. And, if you’re shipping the scale, you also have the added cost of placing the scale on a pallet and strapping it down which takes quite awhile too.
Sometimes customers own freight accounts can save them a little but remember we have multiple scale manufacturers who ship these scales for us and they have tremendous shipping volume as well. If you’re interested in purchasing a floor scale system, we hope you will browse our site and find a system that works for your needs and meets your budget.