Abstract: A method for identifying the weight of a transportation group of bales includes receiving, compressing and shaping crop material into a plurality of bales, wrapping each bale of the plurality of bales with a binding material and attaching an identification tag to each of the bales. A bale ID is crated for each bale and a weight value for each of the bales is associated with the bale ID of the respective bale. The identification tag on the bale for each bale is assigned to the bale ID. The method reads the identification tag of each of plurality of bales and assigns the plurality of bales to a transportation group with a local bale handling device. The plurality of bales in the transportation group are loaded onto a truck, and the total weight of the transportation group is determined by totaling the weight value of each bale in the transportation group.