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OT how many tons on a 1 ton pickup

Xtrucker_99

Cast Iron
Joined
Dec 13, 2003
Location
milroy in.
i have hauled a K&T #2 horizontal mill on my 1 ton ford with no problems. how much weight could i actually haul safely? could i haul a k&t #3 or a 20" shaper?
thanks dt
 
I hauled a 28" shaper on my 2002 duramax gmc flatbed dually. I would guess it weighs around 5000 lbs The truck handled it fine and the suspension didn't really squalt below level. This truck is pretty heavy duty and has helper springs also. The only problem I seen was the machine kinda made the truck top heavey so you couldn't turn into sharp turns fast. I would say you could probly push the truck to atleast 7000 lbs if you drove careful and didnt have to far to go. I would go with a goose neck trailer to be safer though. The area I picked my shaper up wasn't really trailer friendly.
Chris
 
Do you have a pick-up bed or a flatbed on your Ford 350? If a pick-up bed, forget it.
On the new one ton trucks, they are rated to carry loads anywhere from 3500-5000 pounds. Look at your Max GVWR, then subtract the weight of your truck empty, then you have what you can haul. My current Dodge 3500 dually GVWR is 12,000, It says my truck weighs just about 8000 pounds empty, so I can carry 4,000 in the truck.
BUT there is no safe way to tie top heavy things down in any of the pick up beds that I have ever seen.
The places to tie down are way too weak. I would sure never put any horizontal mill in my truck, way too risky for me.
Kind of reminds me of a guy that hauled an 8000 pound lathe in his pick up truck. He ended up crashing.
But if you have a flatbed, I would guess about 4500 pounds max.
 
I have always used 1/2 ton Ford 100 and then 150s. As soon as I got the truck home I would pull the bed and plate the frame and put the bed back on and go get a good set of 6ply mud and snow tires. When needed to haul gravel we would haul 4 ton and some times 1 & 1/2 yd of concrete. I didn't care about resale. When I got done with them they were pretty well worn out. Not legal because of tire size. Never blew a 6 ply. Kept 75 pound of air in rears.
 
We have a Chevy 2500 used for shop transport, it regularly sees 3000-5000 pounds in the bed for trips of 30-50 miles. 6-ply tires aired to 80 psi. This is all in the bottom of the bed below the bedrails though, higher stuff would make me nervous for reasons stated above. I should think a 1-ton should be able to haul up to 6000-8000 lbs. in the same manner, with careful driving and careful positioning/securing of the load.
 
I was working for a rental yard attached to a hardware store. I was asked to deliver a load of drywall for the store. We loaded the first stack onto the bed of the F350 and it almost rolled over onto its side. We put the other stack on and that levelled it out. All four of the rear tires were laying on the sidewalls and the leafsprings were firmly on the bumpstops. "Here goes nothin'" I thought and carefully made my delivery.

When I got back I decided to figure out the load. I put a sheet on our shipping scale. 72 lbs. The truck had 108 sheets on it.
 
I recently hauled an 8,000lb. Dozer on a HD 20' trailer. The trailer was also loaded with a 72" Flail Mower. The bed of the truck was loaded with about another 400lbs of misc. tools and welding tanks. I was probably pushing 15,000+ gross.

The vehicle? An 81 Chevy C10 with a 305/2bbl.

Not a smart move and I wouldn't do it again. The 130-mile trip was white-knuckle all the way and took almost four hours.

The key factors in any pull are tires and brakes.
 
I usually rent a Uhaul trailer, they are less then $20 for the day. Like someone else said the problems are lack of strong tie down points and brakes.
 
Yabbut no Uhaul offering is appropriate for a large horizontal or shaper IMHO.

I'd trust the double axle trailers up to about 4K after that all bets are off.

One thing I have seen is a triple-car trailer (Gooseneck, 2 parallel ramps, 3 axles, pulled by a dually). However, the first car up at the top of the ramp seems squarely over the gooseneck column....which would place most of the weight of 1 vehicle directly over the dually axle.

I wonder if they have special springs???...weight should transfer directly into the frame rails, though.

-Matt
 
About #3,000 is all that I wanted to put in the back of my old '95 F250.

Now we also keep around a F350 cab & chassis pickup with dual rear wheels. 9' x 8' flatbed. The 2WD we had before weighed a hair over #9,000 "empty". We then easily put two tons of feed on it. Didn't feel too bad either, just heavy. I'd say #5,000 is a good weight, this is for a cab & chassis model though.
 
We had a customer who is a general contractor at a shop I worked in for about 12 years.

He had a mid-80's F150 with a Utility bed on it. The bed was a "wide" model, made for a dually truck. I am quite certain it was over the GVWR with just the empty bed on it.

Load Range "C" tires (6 PR), and some Hellwig LP-30 overload springs. He was constantly coming in complaining that it "sagged", and would break the (lifetime warranty) Hellwigs.

We always told him he needed a stouter truck, but he wouldn't buy one because "the registration fees are too expensive....that would be stupid, because this truck is big enough to carry all my stuff".

So, we spent years warranteeing all of the overloaded springs, brakes, and tires. I told the shop owner that this guy would become a liability.

One day he comes in with his lawyer. One of his rear axles (8.8" Ford 1/2-ton unit) snapped on a busy two-lane, he lost control and caused a really nasty pileup. He was going to sue because we had replaced the bearings and seals about 6 months before.

I happened to be in the office when he came in, and I made some comment about how it never would have happened if the truck wasn't so overloaded.

My boss shot me "the look", and I walked back out into the shop. I called all the guys up front, (the boss wasn't real happy about that) and addressed the ambulance chaser. I said, "here are six guys who are willing to testify that "Dave's" truck, in our opinion, was well over the legal limit on any given day, and that we have been trying to tell him that for the past five years."

The boss wised up at that point, and offered to have the truck towed from the impound yard to a public scale and pay all the charges to determine if it weighed more than the GVWR tag said it could weigh.

"Dave" piped up at that point and stated that he had removed all of his tools from the truck and currently had a rental, and our shop was going to pay for that, too.

I told lawyer man that tools or no tools, the wrecked truck was going to weigh over the gross.

The boss chimed in and offered to have the rental weighed, too, just in case the rental company was interested in how much he was hauling.

At that point, the lawyer was dragging "Dave" out by the ear, telling him to shut up....and that's the last time we ever saw either of them... :D


Overloading a light-duty truck on a daily basis is just asking for trouble.
 
I never understood wrecking a truck and being a liability when for just a few dollars you could tow a trailer.
 
Many people figure with overloads, bigger tires
their 1/2ton is capable of carrying lots of weight.
As stated, the Achilles heel is the non floating rear axle, a fairly small bearing, all the weight on the axle shaft.
 
I had a friend who owned a '90 Dakota extended cab with a V6...he used it to take his wife and two kids, all their crap, and tow an 18' car hauler (no brakes) and a 3600 lbs. car all over Texas.

I've had a lot of gravel in my dually but I've never had the springs bottomed out and the truck never felt compromised. I guess somehwere along the way you come to realize that you're not 17 years old anymore and you DO have a lot to lose.
 
I hauled my Bridgeport mill 1800 miles in the back of my F-250 and could hardly tell it was there. Bolted through to the frame of course.
 
The bottom line for reasonable thinking people is are you overweight? period.It is like drinking and driving,it doesn`t matter if you think you are alright after drinks or being overweight when going down the road,that will be up to the judge when you get into an accident.Most of us have done it at some time but were lucky ,some were not.I put the two in the same catagory,it can be a life changing event.
 
I spent 22 years hauling raw milk. One nite at the dinner table I told my wife that one of the drivers was stopped and weighed that day and got a ticket for overweight. Our little girl that was about 8 years old at the time said, "You mean you can get a ticket for being fat?"
Michael
 
my truck is a 88 E-350 with dual wheels. it came with a 12 ft box. i removed the box (great shed now) and installed a 10ft flat bed that has a crossmember every 12". the truck is rated 11,250lbs. i hauled the k&t #2 about 250 miles. it didn't hardly squat when i loaded it.
thanks for all the good input

dt
 
Matt;
i used a U-Haul tandem axle trailer rated for 2400# to haul 2 Bridgeports and a First mill.
over 6000# total.
the tires were a little squat but it made the 40 mile trip with no problems. would do it again in a heartbeat...jim
 








 
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