Got a friend looking at buying a 46ft enclosed to pull behind his 09 F250. The company said that it would exceed his pin weight. His truck is paid for and has been fully deleted and bullet proofed. He is going to add air bags also. What can be done to increase his pin weight.

 

Pin weight is the amount of weight a 5th wheel or gooseneck trailer puts down on the truck. Each truck is rated for X amount of pin weight it can carry safely in the eyes of either the manufacturer or government standards. If you exceed that means you are putting more weight or load on the truck than it was designed to carry. That must be one heck of a trailer as that length should be a tri axle enclosed trailers usually aren't that heavy is what you put in them that adds alot to the pin weight.

 

What can be done to increase pin weight capacity is to get a bigger truck. To increase pin weight, put more stuff in the front of the trailer.

 

I think more information is needed about the truck and trailer.


On its face I agree, more truck is probably needed.


Most likely the rear axle of the truck is rated at 6100 lbs. Figure 3K sits on it right now.


For the trailer, what is the GVWR or wet weight of it? Figure up 25% of that will become the king pin weight that goes against the payload available (about 3K).


Air bags will help to keep it level but will do nothing for the ability of the axle to carry the load. Not to mention the tires.

 

Pin weight is set by the manufacturer and can not be changed except by the manufacturer. Weight ratings can be based on many components in addition to axles and tires.

You can do things to make it seem like you have an increased pin weight, but you can not change the manufacturer's weight ratings.

Steve

 

I would suggest visiting a CAT Scale to get the current weights. The difference between the Rear GAWR and the Rear GAW (from the scale) will be the weight that can be added to the vehicle before hitting the max weight on the rear axle (pin weight). For an RV (5th wheel) the pin is generally around 25% of the gross trailer weight.
The CAT Scale is your friend.

 

X2, CAT is your friend.

The bearings, tires and brakes on the axle of the tow vehicle are what creates the axle rating. For the truck to safely stop the pin weight, it needs the brakes on that axle; air bags do nothing for this.

If you are not going to fill the 44 footer, you could probably put the weight over its axles or a bit behind and be fine pin weight wise, but don't go too far as you need considerable pin weight or the tail can really wag.

 

Max pin weight cannot be changed. At 46ft it's going to be a monster of pin weight I imagine, I've never had a equipment rig like that put less than 4K pounds of pin weight when loaded.

Used this in another thread: Pay to play

Also: The toy decides the truck. By the truck first and your toy has to match the size of the truck, otherwise you get the fun of taking out a second loan.

I feel like that's going to be common use in these towing forums.

 

I'm at 44.5' and have a pin of 2850 with the garage empty. Load my garage and the pin gets even lighter. It's more about axle placement than length...

I agree about the trailer picking the truck. I got lucky finding mine that worked with my existing truck. Most other brands with the same or similar floorplans were much heavier on the pin.

 

That's definitely true. In my case I was talking about enclosed car haulers though, it sounds like you're talking about a toy hauler RV. Whenever we loaded them, even thought he vehicle's in the rear would help, pin weight was still high because of the most forward vehicle. Crap was just heavy

 

All true!