2018 Ram 2500
Trying to figure out the towing capacity for 2018 Ram 2500 6.4 hemi with 3.73 axle short bed crew cab. We are looking into buying a 14000 lb fifth wheel. Has anyone pull this heavy of a fifth wheel w...
Forum Discussion
Slackware,
Grit and I live in one of them states where manufactures ratings are not something we follow. My 1500 is registered at 8000 lbs, as is my sons GM 1500, and other sons Toyota Tundra . None of these have an 8000 lb manufacture rating. ALL weigh about 5000-5400 lbs empty. LEGAL registration is tare x 1.5 to next higher ton! or close to it any how. 5400 x 1.5 is 8100. Hence all three of us pay for, and are legal to 8000 lbs.
I can legally go to 500 lbs per inch width of tire to 20K per axel. WIth my 11" tires, I get 5500 per corner, 11000 per axel total of 22000 gvw.
Now that I have said the above, the enforcement officers that enforce weightlaws, are enforcing the engineers max point load for the road bed! NOTHING to do with manufactures warranty weight ratings! I've been pulled over at 150% of Navistars rating for my dump truck. I have yet to get an over-weight ticket! Because I am under the FEDERAL BRIDGE LAWS, which is the point load rating I mention above. IF ANY state does not allow you to drive at up to or equal to these laws, there federal funding for roads can and will be withheld!
Your point of 48 states follows the manufactures rating is completely incorrect. If I go to Wa states weight laws, RCW 45 and 46 if you want to know where to look! It is very clear you get maximum weight per axel tire etc to no effect this state from collecting federal road taxes per the Federal Bridge Law. Bridge by the way, means spreading the load on ANY type road bed so damage is not occurring to that roadbed, be it on terra firma, soft terrain, or a bridge! There is an Illinois retired CVEO that posts on here that will tell you, you don't know the weight laws. Illinois does not follow manufactures ratings, Montana does not follow manufactures ratings. Pickups get a choice of 7500 or 15000 max legal gvw for the vehicle.
Where you will get in major trouble, is braking if you go down the road at max weight law specs. You will not stop within the field test spec. SO, you get a failed braking ticket, you will have to have your rig towed or put on a trailer, flatbed or equal to a place that can fix your brakes to stop said load. You can't legally drive your rig down the road, until inspected at least in Wa st, by the WSP! Showing your brakes are good for the load. This vs an overweight ticket is a moving violation, Overweight is a non-moving violation, it is as bad on your driving record as a parking ticket! no record on driving, not given to insurance. That failed braking system, bend over!
GCWR and trailer tow rating means nothing to a CVEO! Only the amount of gvw on the axles. Along with you can move at minimum speed laws on that road. Interstates its 40 mph here. MIchigan it is 45. Altho most look the other way at least here if you have no other road to use, like over a mountain pass, you are in the right lane, flashers on etc. They don't bother you. If you're in the left lane doing 25 mph, they will move you over to the right lane! possibly give you a ticket for impeding traffic etc.
As far as the OP goes, frankly, he will NEVER be over an enforced weight limit, unless he has not bought, paid enough tax for driving down the road at the weight he is. Depending upon how far over his paid for registration, red tagged until enough gvw is paid for, 10 day up the registration by 2000 lbs as I have had happen once. I was under all of the federal enforced limits. Ask yourself, is he like me going to be over 22000 lbs on his two axles? no way! RV folks are pretty conservative to staying at or under manufactures ratings. As such, Commercial/Weight enforcement officers will not be too worried about you. No money to be made pulling you over to weight you etc.
I would not pull a 14K trailer for very far with the gas motor in the Ram. It will do it legally! I can go into from experience pulling with lower powered motors, with poor tranny gear and axle ratio's. Ie stalling out on steeper grades etc. NOT FUN!
MY more than 02 on this subject matter!
Marty
I'm going to point out another fallacy regarding you get manufactures ratings.
ALL them 18 wheelers you see going down the road. Most have drive and trailer axles good to 25K lbs. Yet in a tandem situation, ie axles closer than about 8-9', you get 34K between them, or 17K per axel. If between about 8 and 12', you get 18500 per axle, and space enough apart, you get the 20K per axle. Hence why you see some flatbeds with the trailer axel spread way apart. No tare added to the trailer weight, yet you can put an extra 3000 lbs per axle load on them! You limit is still less than the manufactures ratings!
There are some vehicles that do get up to 25K per axle. Bus chassis for example, which can include in the RV world some Type A motor homes.
BUT< to reiterate, to get these load limits, you will need enough paid tax/registration to go down the road legally speaking.
You can also get an overweight ticket, still being under your paid for registration. If your paid for registration if say 32000 lbs, Your at 30000 lbs. BUT, your rear axle is at 21000, you will potentially get an overweight ticket of 1000 lbs. If your a real asset about this, even if not, the LEO can make you move the load around, such that you have 20K or less on that axel. So in the case of one sod farmer driver I know, he had to get his forklift off the trailer and move the pallets around, so his drive axles were under the 34000. He was legal in Canada where he was coming from, but illegal here in Wa St. I can name other examples how things get enforced too from multiple classes with CVEO's from the WSP. Mostly on under 26K gvw be it combined or solo rig examples.
ALL of these CVEO referred to manufactures ratings a "Warranty/performance" ratings. One literally said he could not care if you want to put a 100,000 lbs properly loaded trailer behind a toyota 4 banger pickup, destroy in 100 miles driving down the road. All he cared about was weights on the axle, stopping ability, and could it go the proper speed down the road!
I will swag, most states have weight police following similar laws rules etc.
Marty
Like I said, you are not likely to get pulled over, unless it is obvious that you are doing something wrong. A 1500 pulling a 35 foot 5th wheel, a 2500 pulling a 40 foot 5th wheel might be obvious enough so some LEO, others may not care even if they know it's wrong. Once involved in a large enough accident, they can investigate and determine that you are at fault. They may just go by the certifications of the truck and trailer and not even weigh anything.
I'll put my neck out and tell a story. When I was young, dumb, and full of.. well if you are ex-military you likely know. Needless to say, when I got out of the Navy in 1992 I had a 1984 Toyota "extra cab" long bed truck with a canopy. It had the mighty 4 cylinder and 5 speed. I went to Uhaul and they would only let me get a 4x6 trailer. I needed bigger. A neighbor let me borrow his full sized truck and I was able to rent a 6x12 trailer.I filled the bed of the truck up and it was bottomed out. I then filled the trailer. The total cargo weight was over 12,000 pounds (I had to get the actual tare weight of the truck and trailer and then get it weighed full in order to get paid for my move). I drove from San Diego, California to Orlando, Florida at a top speed of 50 MPH. I had to run the heater the whole way to prevent over-heating. It never stalled out, and I was able to go at least 25 MPH through the passes.
That is what the truck could pull. It wasn't safe, it wasn't legal and if I failed to stop or the trailer or truck flipped I would have been found at fault in any state between California and Florida. I did what I had to do to get my wife and two sons to Florida with our few possessions. About 5 years later I gave the truck to my mom. My step-father used it to haul firewood for about 15 years before he got too old to use it.
The weight limits are there for a reason, safety. They assume a properly maintained vehicle, prepped for towing, in the best case conditions (flat and straight roads with good weather).Like I said, it is doubtful that you will get pulled over for being a bit over the limits of your vehicle, heck no one knows while you are driving unless your rear end is sagging and the trailer is swaying. It is not unheard of for people that are obviously overloaded to get pulled over. They don't care about the commercial weight limits at that point. They will say that the vehicle is in an unsafe condition and can not be driven.
With how little it costs to upgrade from a 2500 to a 3500 SRW, I don't see why anyone would recommend that people exceed the limits of their vehicle. Then again, I've seen people claim that the China Bomb tires are a myth and that they've never had a blowout and they drive 80MPH. To each their own.
Aside from calling bullcheet on hauling 12klbs of “payload” cross country with an old 22re Yoda, (Or maybe you are telling the truth, stupid human truck weren’t invented after cellphone cameras…) you still don’t understand more than you read about from some other paranoid weight ninny.
I will give you that Ram 2500 coils are not preferable for high CoG loads and extremely heavy loading. Hence my original recommendation that not only is the drivetrain far outmatched with a hemi/6speed time bomb but that coils ain’t the best either.
Your stmt about cost difference being minimal between 2500 and 3500 is true on the surface until you realize that there are about 5x the 3/4 tons as 1 tons out there and 100x more 3/4t gassers than 1t. Makes it not so economical / easy to swap up unless you’re ordering or buying new.You realize the current tow ratings only have a 35mph without overheating the motors on a 5% grade! Less than minimum speeds in two states I mentioned. Yes faster than you went, but still under minimum speeds. I've been there with 3500's, even my navistar goes over i90 snoqualmie at 30 mph at 20-22K lbs. THen again, I have a whopping 175hp /335 lbs of torque, Yet it can pull a 30% grade at 30K! My 05 dmax can do 55-60 over I90 at 20-22K lbs, but cant pull but 20K at a 27% grade. Twice the HP, twice the torque, yet one spec is better on both, the other less than the other.
Reality, more to towing than just the GVW of the rig.
Also one has to know what the thing is setup to do. Those late 70 to mid 80 Toyotas were decent trucks for there size etc. I out hauled more full size 15 series rigs by lbs than I can quote with my 76 Wish I still had it.
BUT, again, if you would have been pulled over, weight would not have been the key to your problems. Stopping, asset dragging, swaying by more than 12-18' per side etc, to the point you are considered unsafe, those regs will hurt you, and get you off the road. The weight laws are there to protect the publics owner ship of the roads. Along with collecting the tax to cover you damaging the roads. Even if you are over the axel limits I mentioned, LEO's can still let you run down the road, after you pay the piper for being over the limits. This also assumes you have a safe rig etc.
Weight laws go back to wagon roads in the early 1800's. THere were no manufacture specs like we have today. Hence axle limits, and lbs per inch width of the tire. Thats how horse carts were measured to be over or under weight! Same as today. States can allow over 500 lbs per inch of tire, here a DW rig gets 600 vs singles at 500.
At the end of the day, no one is suggesting the OP run down the road at any legal maximum weight. Most if not all of us, have said 14K for that drivetrain is too much. A SW 35 vs a 2500, usually has no difference, Ford it is or was a 2" block between the axle and springs. Some SW trucks today, have more carrying capacity than a DW. Most DW in reality, more than a SW from a pickup standpoint. But there are SW setups that carry more than DW setups. Just not popular.
There is not a one size fits all in this game.
MartyI've never seen a SRW with a higher capacity than a DRW, but it's possible. The other major advantage to the DRW is that almost all are extended wheelbase and the extra tires adds more side-to-side stability.
This makes a huge difference on rough curvy roads and/or windy conditions. It's almost a requirement for full profile 5th wheels because of how much the wind can push the 5th wheel side to side.
