Narrative:

I was assigned a B737-9 with no system. Staged were two carts of cargo that showed that they weighed 522 lbs each. When preparing to load one cart; I went to load it and found that the first box was too heavy for me to lift [or] move. I had others on my crew to assist me on trying to get it on the belt. The three of us could not get the piece to move. I questioned the weight of the piece. Then we tried the other piece in the cart and ended up with the same results. After scratching our heads for a few and trying different approaches we gave up on that cart and tried the second cart that also showed in the staging 522 lbs. One box weighed about 100 lbs and the other was a similar box that was in the first cart. Very heavy also. The placards on each piece showed that they were all in the same airway bill at 1044 lbs. There were also other placards on each piece that showed 474 kg. I don't believe that both carts were the same weight. I think that cargo just split the two carts by half and sent it out. As heavy as the three boxes were I [was] not confident that the 1044 total was even correct. Because of them being so heavy I wasn't willing to slide them on the floor of the aircraft and cause damage; [as it] would have put them close to the doors; one cart in the front and one cart in the back of the aircraft. This would have directly affected the weight and balance of the aircraft. We held them off because we couldn't move them and if we could the weights were suspect. There is no doubt in my mind that these pieces were not ran across a scale. The weight was just divided in half. My concern is how often do we send things out with cargo just split in half?

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Ramp worker reported refusing to load boxes that were too heavy and noticed that the reported weights may have been incorrect.

Narrative: I was assigned a B737-9 with no system. Staged were two carts of cargo that showed that they weighed 522 lbs each. When preparing to load one cart; I went to load it and found that the first box was too heavy for me to lift [or] move. I had others on my crew to assist me on trying to get it on the belt. The three of us could not get the piece to move. I questioned the weight of the piece. Then we tried the other piece in the cart and ended up with the same results. After scratching our heads for a few and trying different approaches we gave up on that cart and tried the second cart that also showed in the staging 522 lbs. One box weighed about 100 lbs and the other was a similar box that was in the first cart. Very heavy also. The placards on each piece showed that they were all in the same airway bill at 1044 lbs. There were also other placards on each piece that showed 474 kg. I don't believe that both carts were the same weight. I think that cargo just split the two carts by half and sent it out. As heavy as the three boxes were I [was] not confident that the 1044 total was even correct. Because of them being so heavy I wasn't willing to slide them on the floor of the aircraft and cause damage; [as it] would have put them close to the doors; one cart in the front and one cart in the back of the aircraft. This would have directly affected the weight and balance of the aircraft. We held them off because we couldn't move them and if we could the weights were suspect. There is no doubt in my mind that these pieces were not ran across a scale. The weight was just divided in half. My concern is how often do we send things out with cargo just split in half?

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.