Wow, the misinformation flying around on this thread are pretty bad. To Clarify, first, I've used an Andersen ultimate hitch on a 3500 Ram for coming up on one year now, a little over 5000 miles of towing, about 1k of that with a 17k plus triple axle rig, the other 4k with my smaller bighorn GVWR of 15.5k. I'm an engineering tech, almost 40 years as and aircraft mechanic, 20 of those in heavy crash repair, service life extension modifications and failure analysis. As mentioned, I use and Andersen ultimate, haven't complained about it, but try to keep the discussions honest.
Once again, the Andersen Ultimate hitch doesn't transfer the weight to the gooseneck ball. The square base tube base is made up of a tube within a tube, and doesn't have a socket per say and doesn't ride on top of the ball, it goes over it, whereupon you put in a pin that goes under the ball. You then tighten a bolt on top of the square tube that pulls the smaller tube insert upward pulling the base of the hitch down firmly into the bed of the truck. Any force put on the ball is pulling on it in order to pull the base of the hitch down. Once the hitch is anchored down on the bed you then tighten to bolts on the forward part of the tube assembly that takes out any play or slack out of the dual tube assembly. This setup does a great job of keeping the hitch assembly firmly mounted to the bed of the truck. The design distributes the weight over a fairly large footprint onto the bed of the truck. Whether you feel carrying the weight of the load on the bed of the truck or not is a good idea, that's valid question, and there are probably enough users around to make the decision fact based. My hitch was starting to cause some noticeable indentation on my truck bed, so I made myself some spacers to distribute the weight a little better.
Finally you see comparisons to the earlier version of the B&W hitch, but that isn't necessarily a good comparison because the way the bases distribute the load is a fair bit different.
