Pickup truck tow vehicle stability tests

Huntindog wrote:

valhalla360 wrote:

RinconVTR wrote:

valhalla360 wrote:

RinconVTR wrote:
Take the stability of 2 rear tires and multiply by two...give or take.

OP, am we missing something? Is there a hidden question here?

Wow, not even close to reality. By this logic is we fit the entire length of the axle with tires (say 8 tires) it will be 8 times as stable (it's not).

The answer is yes, dually's are more stable but as long as you are within weight ratings, there is no safety issue. SRW trucks don't fall over because they are missing the training wheels. You would be very hard pressed to document a situation where a SRW would roll but a dually would stay upright while towing.

I suggest you start watching semi's. You will notice a great many are going singles (a little difference as the outside width is held steady). If they were falling over left and right, trucking companies wouldn't use them. That is about as objective as you can get on the subject.

The reason to get dually's is because you need the extra load capacity.

Question was about stability...not load...not safety...stay on topic. You answered the question yourself...but yet you go on.

If you look at the trucks converting from dual to single tires, they are not carrying the highest loads and the single tire is VERY wide. VERY WIDE! Now why would they do that? Hmmmm

Also stability while towing...IMO...does not mean resistance to tip over. Roller over "stability" I don't believe was the point of discussion here, but if it was, I'd simply take measure. The wider version likely wins. And is that not the dually?

Safety was implicit in the question. If the OP wasn't concerned with safety, what would be the point of the question?

To end it as yes, it's stable and ignore the fact that there is no distinguishable benefits (other than load ratings), would be highly misleading, so I took the liberty of adding to the discussion.

Supersingle truck tires are very wide. They are very wide so they can handle heavy loads not to make the truck more stable. I brought it up because there were misleading posts that more than one tire is intrinsically more stable.

True, stability could be in reference to either roll overs or the trailer pushing the back of the truck around:
- For roll over, there is an improvement but as stated, there's not a problem with SRW trucks towing 5th wheels falling over. The impact while towing is negligible and well within safe operating parameters.
- For stability in reference to the trailer pushing the rear of the truck around, there is even less effect (not that 5th wheels typcially have an issue with this anyway). There may be a couple hundred pounds from the extra tires, axle length and such but overall the weight planted on the rear axle but it's going to be pretty close to the same for a similarly outfitted rig. Available traction is a function of the coefficent of friction and the force pressing the wheels to the ground. If they are the same, there would be no additional stability. Any negligible difference could be made up by throwing some extra weight in the truck bed.

So my initial answer still stands. There is a difference but not enough to matter.

It's about standards.
Some people are perfectly happy with a less than ideal setup... And not just in this discussion about trucks either... All the way down to the guy towing with a Prius.

If you are happy with your setup, then I guess I am happy for you.

If you are exceeding the tow ratings, definitely move up to the heavier duty truck. I believe I said that 3-4 posts ago.

But if you are within ratings, that is like saying you need a 1 ton dually to be safe pulling a popup. Certainly it will pull it with ease but it's really rather silly waste of the trucks capabilities.