An out-of-state trucker can’t escape a $14,250 fine for driving his overweight rig through Hellertown, a state Superior Court panel has ruled.

It doesn’t matter that Na’ron Akins’ GPS told him to go that way, Judge Mary Jane Bowes concluded in the state court’s opinion.

Akins, 40, a Florida resident, was cited by borough police Officer Kevin McCarthy after being stopped on Northampton Street in June 2018.

The weight limit on that street is 6 tons. McCarthy said Akins’ tractor-trailer weighed more than 30 tons. The fine was based on the finding that the truck was 49,789 pounds too heavy to be on that street.

Akins, who acted as his own lawyer, appealed to Bowes’ court after Northampton County Judge Kimberly McFadden refused to void his fine.

Bowes noted that signs warning of the weight restriction were posted a mile before the beginning of Northampton Street and there was a detour for overweight vehicles. The 6-ton limit was determined by an engineering study.

Akins countered that he was allowed on the street despite his truck’s weight because he was making a cargo pickup on another nearby road for a run to Texas. So, he contended, he had a local traffic exemption. He also claimed his GPS directed him to use Northampton Street to get to Interstate 78.

Bowes rejected those arguments. She found Akins would only have had a weight exemption if he had been picking up cargo at a spot along Northampton Street.

Because his pickup didn’t occur on Northampton Street “his bill of lading…did not serve as a permit to drive wherever he wanted or wherever his GPS told him to go after making his pickup, with utter disregard for posted weight restrictions,” Bowes wrote.