can I tow on the ball
My truck is a Ram 2500 diesel with a GVWR of 10,000lbs. My trailer weighs 5300 unloaded. I travel with a full tank of water and not much else, so my total cargo weight is maybe in the four hundred lb ...
Forum Discussion
Gdetrailer wrote:HuckleberryHunter wrote:
CAN you? Yes. SHOULD you? IMO, no.
WDH is there for a reason.
OP has a 3/4 ton truck with a heavy Diesel engine and has 4K of cargo weight available..
That truck will never need any weight restoration on the front with even 1K lbs of tongue weight.. 1K of TW most likely will barely lift the front and I doubt because of the Diesel engine will every be missed.
WD hitches were designed to allow vehicles to tow much larger loads than they were originally designed for by pushing some of the tongue weight which would have overloaded the rear axles forward to the front axles..
OP has the option to not use WD if they choose to do so. The only caveat is to make sure the trailer TW is above 12%, ideally 15% for best towing stability..
For the record, I have never used WD on any of my 3/4 ton trucks and have towed 20ft and 26ft trailers with 7K GVWR and have a 10K GVWR 18 ft flatbed trailer that I have loaded well over 10K and never had the headlights point to the sky as folks love to banter about..
And did you check to make sure your hitch had enough capacity for weight carrying of the tongue weight. Many hitches have a much lower rating for hitch weight for weight carrying vs. Weight distribution.
My trailer has a 1500lbs hitch weight under the WD rating, but noticeably over the weight carrying rating on the hitch.
