determining pin weight
glanced thru the searches, but didn't see anything on how to determine what my pin weight is. I know I have to use scales, I guess truck scales, but how do I go about determining this? Do I weigh my...
Forum Discussion
RCMAN46 wrote:
one more try.
Take a hypothetical truck that has 2000 lbs on each axle with a wheel base of 10 ft and without a 5th wheel trailer.
Take a 5th wheel that has a pin weight of 1000 lbs.
Mount the hitch directly over the rear axle. Now you will have 3000 lbs on the rear axle and 2000 lbs on the front axle with a total truck weight of 5000 lbs with trailer hitched.
Now move the hitch halfway between the truck axles. Now you will have 2500 lbs on each truck axle and 5000 lbs total truck weight.
Now move the hitch 5 feet behind the rear axle. Now the rear axle will have 3500bs and the front axle will have 1500 lbs and still have a total truck weight of 5000 lbs.
In all three cases the pin weight is 1000 lbs.
But according to some the pin weight will vary from 500 lbs to 1500 lbs depending on where the hitch is mounted on the truck. The pin weight is fixed and can not change.
When the trailer is hitched to the truck the total truck weight can not change by moving the location of the hitch.
It is simple the true pin weight is the total weight of the truck when hitched minus the total truck weight before it is hitched.
In the real world not all 5th wheel hitches are mounted over the centerline of the rear axle. Some with long boxes may be mounted in front of the rear axle and some that have a very short box may be behind the rear axle.
That clears it up for me. I completely see what you're saying. Looks like I'll be making a code change to my calculators.
