I'm gonna be buying a brand new dump coming up pretty soon. I want the 550, but with my trailer i'm way over 26000 lbs.

How are the 450s compared to the 550s? they seem heavy duty enough and they are a few grand less which is nice.

Also, does anyone know if I can register my trailer with 9990 GVW to 9500 instead to still be legally below CDL?

Thanks

 

I like my 450, friend has a 550. At times I'd wish I'd have gotten a 550 but somehow my combo rating is better than his. My 450 is 16,500 truck 30,000 combo. I don't remeber for sure what his 550 is at...
My lightweight is around 11,200 so their still isn't a lot of wiggle room load wise. I've scaled at 21,000 and it handled great..just not leagal... If I had it to do over again I'd look into a alumium bed rather than steel to loose some weight.
Depending on where you are located if you are making money with it you are commercial so I'd just go ahead and get your cdl.

 

yeah it's for my construction company. i suppose that would be the path of least resistance.


i know people have had problem with fuel contamination. how widespread of a problem is it? have people with the detuned c&c had the same problem?

 

I have ton a ridiculous amount of research on this topic over the last year and a half. It is a topic that people freak out about and seem to blow it out of proportion. Most of the People who say it is a terribly common problem are the ones who have not tried to educate themselves about it, and they are the ones will tell you that they have heard of it being a huge problem. Where in reality it is a very insignificant amount of people who have had the problem.

I am part of this forum and one other one, and on the other one there is a very good thread about it. It is a huge forum and they have had only a few reported incidences, and they were all self inflicted (DEF put into the diesel tank, aftermarket larger tank that was leaking and let water in) and things like that.

I talked to my dealer and he said they have had to do one, and it was also because someone put DEF into the fuel tank.

I am not a 6.7 owner yet, but I have done more research than a lot of 6.7 owners

 

thanks. i'm so excited to drive the new deisels. I'm leaning more towards the 450 because it has the 4.30 axle ratio. i've heard the 4.88 in the 550 is a KILLER on fuel. anyone else hear that?

 

actually the f450 i am looking at has 4.10 gears, is that even better?

 

You must be looking at a cassis cab model vs a pickup model. I think the chassis cab's have the 4:10's.

The 4:10's would be better for fuel economy vs the 4:30's if you are empty and just driving around. If you are loaded heavy then it is subjective as to which gear set is better. The lower gears (4:30's) would keep you in the power band better and may perform better than the higher gears (4:10's) with your foot to the floor sucking more fuel. Lots of variables.

Good luck.

 

I like the 4.30's I adverage 11-15 empty, 11-13 loaded heavy, around 8 plowing snow with my 9'2 boss plow. Towing anything heavy with starting weight of the truck and trailer thru any hills I'd stick to atleast the 4.30's. With the 6 speed the truck still likes to be in 5th and 6th gear as much as it can. Mine started life as a CC.

 

ah i get it then, it's all relative. gives me a lot to think about.

 

Ok, cool. So the 450 CC comes with 4:30's? Makes sense. I wasn't sure and was too lazy to look it up. Actually short on time when I posted. Thanks for the info.

 

just went to build and price f450 chassis, they offer a 16k gvw downgrade. very tempting. i mean the truck is always going to be overweight, all the time anyway. in my old f450 i had a load of stone in it and was over weight, it wasn't even up to the sideboards.

 

An F550 and 9990 trailer doesn't need a CDL. The F550 won't need a CDL until the trailer goes north of 10k GVWR.

 

in MA it's the total gvw of the trailer and the truck. you can't do anything anymore, it's all about the buck. any trailer over 3k needs to be inspected every year.

 

That's kinda partially true.

It's based off of GVWR and it's only true when the GVWR of the trailer is over 10k.

Once the trailer is over 10k GVWR then the sum of the trucks GVWR and the trailers GVWR is limited to 26k with out a CDL.