What have you towed lately

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1-8-4-3-6-5-7-2

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A lot of firewood. It's been about 4 months since I last hauled out a load and it was half of what's here now; and that fire burned so hot we had to stand about 40 feet away until it burned down.



Yup, 32 in each stack, at least as far as the first four go. The last four probably had 35-40. I really should have thrown a strap or two across the front and tied the mattresses down to the front rail.
I thought about the U-haul, but they have surge brakes and I'm not a fan of those whatsoever! Especially since the brakes on these trucks are garbage, I'm weary about even a half full U-haul trailer pushing my truck around.

Yep, good point on the brakes! I usually use my Excursion to pull the U-Haul and it has decent brakes on it, and our 2002 Suburban did well but we gave it to our daughter.

I'm not trying to be argumentative here, but trying to help understand the weight you have in pallets so you can accurately address what your issues are and what steps need to be taken to resolve them since you mentioned quite a few good upgrades. I've hauled quite a few pallets before and 32 pallets would be much higher than what you have pictured. A standard pallet is 6.5" thick, so 32 of them would be over 17' high not including deck height of your trailer. 20 pallets is close to 22' high. For reference, a semi truck is only 13.5' tall total. Your weight estimate of around 40 pounds each is accurate. So if you had 4 stacks of 16, and 4 stacks of 20 (which is a high estimate), then x 40 pounds for each pallet it's about 5,760 pounds. Depending on the speed you were driving, wind resistance could be really difficult to overcome and would add a tremendous load to the truck.
 

1-8-4-3-6-5-7-2

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Post a screenshot of your timing table and 4th TCC unlock and 4th downshift tables. Is it gutless holding speed or all around? My 1500 would haul that in OD all day. My math puts you at or over 8000# and at that height, it may as well be enclosed. No need for bags there, what you really need is a weight distributing hitch for that kind of tongue weight.

Right, so many people want to add bags. The bags change nothing other than make the back of the truck sit higher, which fixes what?.... nothing. All bags fix is a hurt ego from a saggy ass, but the poor towing characteristics from an improperly set up trailer still exist. With that said, as long as his truck handled well with the loaded trailer, there isn't a need to change anything. The pallet weight is lower than 7,000 pounds, more like 5,500 pounds, and I don't think bags or a WDH are needed for that as long as the truck handles well. Only a scale holds the true answer, and that is to figure out the actual tongue weight and how much weight is removed from the front tires. Another thing to consider about using a WDH is that the load on the trailer is rarely going to be the same weight, so a WDH would be a PITA to set up each time.
 

Supercharged111

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You can set it up for a 6000-8000# load and be close enough in that range to see the benefit. I run the same setup for my enclosed hauler empty or loaded, but I suspect tongue weight is close to the same either way. I know it's 1000-1100# loaded.
 

1-8-4-3-6-5-7-2

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You can set it up for a 6000-8000# load and be close enough in that range to see the benefit. I run the same setup for my enclosed hauler empty or loaded, but I suspect tongue weight is close to the same either way. I know it's 1000-1100# loaded.

Good point. I've never use a WDH for a flat bed, but I guess the bars can be left off when empty, although still a slight pain. When haling a trailer, I tend to go a bit heavy on the tongue to help prevent sway.

Quick story that was scary when it happened and lesson learned - The transmission went out on my '76 C10. My friend's brother worked at a transmission shop and was going to rebuild it for me. He brought a 16' trailer with his S-10 to haul the C10! He decided to put the C10 on the trailer backwards (this was 25 years ago and I don't remember for sure, but I think reverse was all that still worked). Anyway... a small S-10 pulling a C10 loaded backwards on a 16' trailer with no trailer brakes... is this not a perfect recipe for disaster??? Yep, it started swaying uncontrollably throwing the S-10 around like a rag doll! I'm not sure how the hell he did it, but he managed to get the situation under control with no damage. After that I've always loaded heavy on the hitch.
 

geeeee89

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Towed a trailer to pick up a Dana 44 last weekend. Axle is about 350lbs and trailer itself is 1900. It's a 16' car hauler.

My truck isn't really a towing machine but I use it as a truck so it tows. Lifted on 35s but only has 3.73s...my saving grace is that it's a manual. I just stay in 4th gear and it works fine.
 

alpinecrick

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Post a screenshot of your timing table and 4th TCC unlock and 4th downshift tables. Is it gutless holding speed or all around? My 1500 would haul that in OD all day. My math puts you at or over 8000# and at that height, it may as well be enclosed. No need for bags there, what you really need is a weight distributing hitch for that kind of tongue weight.

This^^^......
 

BNielsen

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@Supercharged111 - Don't have HPTuners or anyway to pull data like that yet; it would take a lot of throttle to get going and there wasn't much more grunt once I got up to speed, even with PE which comes on around 2200 or 2500 I can't remember, I kept it pulled in 3rd for the pallet load and that was cruising RPM running about 45-50 MPH, and the furniture load I kept in 4th but took a slower route so it was around 35-45.
Both loads were a lot more tongue weight than I really would've liked but I didn't have much say in loading, the pallet load was loaded up and wound up being way more than I expected being put on my trailer. My buddy brought his 25' gooseneck and only had about 1/2 of what I had here loaded on his truck.

@1-8-4-3-6-5-7-2 - The pallets look deceiving, they're flipped upside down every other one so 16 are upright and 16 are upside down. I weighed two stacks with a forklift at work and they scaled out to 900 pounds a stack, I wish I would've taken the truck across the scale to see how much it really weighed.
 
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