Ok. A little background. I run a lodge in the Rocky Mountains. Water is a huge issue for us. Three wells don't give us what we need, so we get about 150,000 gallons trucked in to us each year at a premium. We are looking at the possibility of hauling our own water to save on costs. We have an '03 f350 crew cab 4x4 drw and an '06 f250 crew can SRW. Per Ford, the f350 can bumper pull or fifth wheel pull 12,400#. My f250 can bumper pull 12,500# and fifth wheel pull 15,500#. The f250 is my personal truck, so it would be the backup and not the primary. That means we have to base our trailer off the capacity of the f350. Now I know these trucks are capable of pulling way more than the legal rating, but the legal rating is what I'm going off of here.

If I put a 1200 gallon tank on a trailer I'm looking at 9600 pounds of water, leaving me 2800 pounds for trailer and poly tank. Every gooseneck I've looked at runs 6000 pounds and up, but I've found equipment haulers at 2500 pounds rated to carry 14,000 pounds. Seems to me it would fit the bill perfectly.

My boss is concerned that a conventional trailer with 9600 pounds on it would be too squirrely to pull safely. My thought is that if they are rated to pull up to 15,000 pounds, they should be safe at that weight. He'd like to get some more input and experiences from folks who have pulled that much weight on a conventional hitch.

He wants to go with a gooseneck, which will either limit our hauling capacity to 500 gallons or will require us to go way over the legal limit. Thoughts?

 

speaking from experience in the ag industry it all depends on the trailer set up. My old man has an 06 F350 SRW and he has succesfully pulled a 36ft flat bed with 2 1500 gallon water tanks. granted it was a custom built trailer for the tanks and the axles are almost in the middle of the trailer. We live on the gulf coast of Texas so we are very flat ground. I see you are in Pagosa Springs so i am ASSuming that you have some good grades that you have to pull. All of that being said he pulls that trailer with no problems. He probably has pulled it about 6000 miles in the past tweo years and no harm has been done. Just dont get in a hurry and make SURE you have electric over hydrolic brakes....i repeat ELECTRIC will not stop the load. And dont get in a big hurry. Yea the truck will pull it 80 but thats not the problem its stopping it that takes a while. Also baffle are your friend. All in all done the trailer cost us about 18,000 but that is rigged out with 2 4 inch pumps and all the hoses and an auxilary fuel tank for the pumps. My 07 Dually has no problem what so ever handling the wieght but i also have air bags. Fully loaded the trailer is only slightly tongue heavy. Probably 60% on the truck on 40% on the trailer. The trailer is a 36ft Dual Tandem Gooseneeck trailer. Its all about center of gravity. Also around here we just avoid the scales

 

Wow, that's a ton of weight for a bumper pull! That's 24,000 pounds just in water!!!

The tank I'm looking at is 12' long and if I go with a 16' trailer, I should be able to get it well balanced... I'm thinking off-setting it about two feet towards the nose should give me the hitch weight I need to get good control while also having enough weight over the trailer axles to prevent overloading the tongue.

What do you mean by electric over hydraulic? Electric signal that triggers hydraulic brakes?

 

I forgot to mention that it was a Gooseneck not a bumper pull. And yes it is very heavy. Just dont let your foot get away from you and go easy on her. it moves slow and steady. Like i said we are on flat ground but i dont see a problem pulling anything around 16-18K in some decent grades as long as you have gauges

 

yes electric/hydraulic are elctrically controled hydrualic brakes. You will have to install a new trailer brake controller because from my experience out factory TBC doesnt play nice with E/H brakes. He uses a tekonsha and loves it. I have mine Jerry rigged and i can get by in a pinch

 

Oh, gooseneck... Okay. Still mega heavy, but makes more sense...

 

Pulled over 23k with both my old 6.0 and my 6.4. Both were 250's. Both handled the loads. Trailer was a gooseneck. Only way to tow.

 

Just make sure you get tanks that are meant to be moved over the road with water
in them or your back the squirrel on the road ride. If you can have the trailer built
for this use only you will be better off than remounting the tanks each time you
need them. This coming from a guy that has driven both a 5K and 10K fuel truck.
You really want to have some baffles in the tanks. Also try to stop too fast and
you will end up taking the tires off the rig. So if you have 1500 Gal. You will have
200 Cubic Ft @ 62.428 Lb per Cubic Ft = 12485 Lb Just a little bit of fresh water.
If you have any thing like a lot of hardness then you have to add more weight
per Cubic foot.

Sean

 

My trailer load last trip was 8800 lbs on the axles, so around 9800 total trailer load, with a tag hitch with weight distribution. Electric brakes. Towed like it wasn't there, just a bit slow accelerating, downshifting on hills. Braking was as good as unloaded. Mind you it took a bit of fuel, and we were going through quite hilly country, some decent 7% to 9% grades. So the weight is not going to be a big issue. For me, getting the trailer load-balanced correctly would be important, and keeping the tank full so no sloshing.

Brian

 

I have a 10k dump trailer that i use on the back of my 12k lbs truck and she tows great.
Have you looked into a 14' dump trailer ?
It would have other uses and the wheels are centered under the trailer.
Most also have d-rings in them to tie things down.

 

Gooseneck is the only way to go for hauling heavy loads. Electric brakes will work if they are in proper order, and you have a good controller. Spent years thinking electric brakes were crap until i got a good controller. Now I can lock the trailer wheels with a full load. (15000 on the trailer) Think about what it will cost to do all this hauling though. 150000 gal @ 1200 per load is more than 2 trips per week depending on how even your use is. I don't know how far you need to go, but figure $1 per mi in operating cost plus the time it takes, and the equipment cost.

 

Water is 8.34 pounds per gallon and 7.48 gallons per cubic foot. Just some numbers to help you calculate weight.

 

Do you only need the extra water when your busy? Are your wells runing 24hrs a day? If not why not just increase the storage on site?

 

Thanks for all the input guys... I used to drive fire trucks, so am very familiar with the importance of baffles and keeping the tank empty or full!

So sounds like what I'm hearing is go gooseneck and don't worry about gcwr limits? If I go gooseneck, I can go with more volume, too... So I could go with 1500 or even 2000 gallons... That would be really nice. We are 20 miles round trip from the fill station and I'm figuring 10mpg for the trip... (I usually get 18 mpg empty on that same run). Also figuring 1 hour round trip, not including dump time back here on the property.

We already have 7200 gallons of storage on site with wells running 24/7... During our retreat season additional storage might help... But we get less than 1 gallon per minute with all three wells combined. So refill time is important, and we often don't get enough of it. During our fall season we have one group here for three months straight and they are our biggest hauling need cause the wells don't stand a chance of keeping up.

 

The tank size (gallons) will put you in CDL territory before weight will. I recommend a dual tire, tandem gooseneck. Here is the one I use. This is one of those 20k+ loads. Stability with it is second to none and with a load like this it will stop on a dime.