How Much Can YOU Haul IN 1/2 Ton???

[Tachyon]

I know this is an old thread. I just came across it and I thought you might find this amusing...or something.

I once worked at a remote camp in Northern Ontario. They had an old 93'ish Silverado 1500 4x4. One winter my wife and I got stuck with the Christmas shift. In other words doing all the maintenance, loading wood in all the boilers twice a day. Plowing the driveways etc. While the rest of the staff buggered off to see family, go to Florida or whatever.

We had a snowfall and a bit of melt and the camp road got pretty slick. The routine in that case was to go down to the highways depot and get sand. They'd give it to you free, but you had to haul it yourself. It was the week between Christmas and New Years so nearly everything was closed in town. The guy at Highways was new/ low man on the totem pole I guess and hadn't done a sand load for civilians before. He asked how much did I want. I said I dunno. The usual I guess, truck's outside, fill 'er up.
So I watched while he took the big bucket loader and dumped an entire bucket into the bed. Filled it overflowing! The poor truck was right on the suspension stops!
I drove her back to camp...7-8 km outside of town. She sure felt loaded down, but she made it. Then the Wife drove her up and down the hill and around the other camp roads while I stood on the sand pile in the bed, slinging sand on the road with a shovel.
That truck was still there several years later last I'd heard. Still hauling beds full of cut firewood out of the bush with 4-5 guys sitting in and on top. She may or may not have had the slightest hint of a bend to her frame.

According to Google and my calculator, a 4x8 bed, 2 feet deep full of sand is about 7500 lbs!
Oops!

I in no way recommend doing anything that stupid, but hey. Like a Rock isn't just a marketing slogan!

 

[Supercharged111]

This is 2 yards, or 4000# minimum, and a fraction of what you describe.

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But I never hit the bump stops.

 

[yevgenievich]

Similar story to above with sand loading except for other reasons. Already unloaded alot of the sand in this picture. Stock el camino ss, 4 speed car. was a slow ride.

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[stutaeng]

...old thread...yes, LOL.

I once got loaded a full yard of wet sand on my 99 NBS 1500 once (dinky 3 leafpack.) (2800 lb-ish dry, who knows how much wet ) The operator asked if I wanted 1/2 yard or 1 yard. I couldn't remember what the darn thing was rated for in "yards of...blah!" LOL.

I was inside the cab when he loaded me, so I didn't see the sag, until I got home! The truck did handle differently, stopping distance was greatly increased...The only good thing going for me was that I had already switched to LT-series tires. I spent the rest of the day shoveling sand out.

Soon after that I realized I needed a 2500 truck...

 

[Tachyon]

This is 2 yards, or 4000# minimum, and a fraction of what you describe.

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But I never hit the bump stops.

I just did the numbers quick in my head. I figured a 4x8 bed, 2 feet high, plus the mound like in your photo. converted that to 64 cubic feet. Asked google the weight of sand per cubic foot. It said 115lbs. 64x115=7,360. I figured plus the mound, and us roughly 7,500 lbs. Seemed high to me, but Google's never wrong, right? Anyway, it was a LOT of weight in an old truck.

 

[Tachyon]

It's funny, the wife and I were talking about that whole adventure and it was me wondering how much we overloaded that truck that lead me to this post. When I Googled GMT400 load capacity overload or something, this thread came up. Figured I'd log in and share the story.

 

[PlayingWithTBI]

I once got loaded a full yard of wet sand on my 99 NBS 1500 once (dinky 3 leafpack.) (2800 lb-ish dry, who knows how much wet)

Yeah, we always had a rule of thumb for road base (AKA 1-2-3), 1 yard is about 1-1/2 Tons so, you're pretty close. Plus, with EPA requirements it's always wet to eliminate, not just reduce, dust emissions. Which sucked when we had the gravel pit in CA because, water was more expensive than gravel there

 

[tksoldierx]

Hauled 7600lbs of scrap metal 60 miles in a 16’ trailer last year with my 95 ecsb k1500. When she was still my dads work truck, he took 5500lbs of sheet metal to the scrapyard in the pickups box. Just today took a dump trailer of garbage to the landfill, total weight for trailer pickup and trash was 13,600lbs

 

[Erik the Awful]

I threw 800 pounds of scrap in the bed of Way Cool Jr. on Thursday. It handled it with no problem, even missing a leaf from each of the rear springs. I think I could get away with about 1200 lbs in the bed, but it'd be sagging.

 

[Rock Hard Concrete]

Put 2.5 yards of broken concrete in my longbed 2000 gmt800. The bump stops were squashed flat against the axle. Drove about 25 miles like that. The things you do when you first open a construction business lol. Now my 12k dump trailer handles that, though I still load that thing to 20,000 on the regular.