Did a search but didn't find much. While there are plenty of discussions for adding winter weight, how about adding some weight for a road trip for an empty bed. I need to make a 10-day 6,000-mile road trip and it looks like I may be taking the 350. My old truck had a 100-gallon aux tank in the bed, so I had extra weight. The 350 is empty so I was thinking on dropping 400-500 pounds in the bed over the rear axle to help smooth it out a bit as some Interstates/Highways are not in the best shape these days. For anyone that does this type of thing, how much weight do you use?

 

Lower your tire pressures.

 

I wouldn't take a thing.

 

Either way. Maybe a way to carry weight one way and not the other to judge what you’d like in the future.

 

I did a 13 day 5500 mile trip in the F350 empty except my behind the cab toolbox. I wouldn't add any weight it will just hurt fuel economy. I ran 60 psi front and 52 psi rear cold pressures and the truck was a dream to drive that far. Of course I did replace the factory shocks and steering stabilizer with Bilstein 5100s just before we left.

 

I run 60 up front and 55 rear but I still have a noticeable difference between carrying some weight in the bed versus completely empty. I normally would not add anything, but a 6,000-mile trip is a bit different than running around town or driving a few hundred miles over the weekend. Not too concerned about the fuel milage. If I can keep the 85+ year old ladies that will be riding in the truck more comfortable and not rattling their dentures out of their head, that would be money well spent. The more comfortable they are, the further down the road I can get before I have to pull over and let them out to take a break.

 

You can look for something like this. Fill with water and drain it when you are done

https://shurtrax.com/full-size-picku...action-weight/

there is always the option of sand tubes as long as you strap them down well

 

I agree, truck loaded is really smooth compared to empty. I'd throw 500 in the bed and test it on a curvy fast road or highway and adjust the weight from there.

 

Why are y'all sandbagging @SARDiverDan 's idea?

Guess I'll join in... with more sandbagging.

Carrying along 400-500 lbs weight in the back of the pickup bed will indeed quite nicely work to provide a smoother ride.

The exact location where the weight is placed can have a noticeable effect on a number of related factors... from front end bounce over expansion joints, to steering traction, to the amplification effect of weight placement that would allow a lesser amount of weight to have the same effect toward increasing ride comfort.

A couple of years ago I took a bare F-550 chassis cab on a 700 mile trip to get a body mounted to it. The truck was optioned with the High Capacity Towing, Payload Plus, and Extra Heavy Service spring packages, with a 19,500 lbs GVWR, so driving the chassis bob tail without any bed or weight at all would have been a back breaking bouncy way to remove teeth.

I reasoned that if I placed 600 lbs as far as possible aft of axle, to the very end of the truck frame projecting behind the axle, that would have the same effect as placing 3 times that amount of weight over or slightly ahead of the rear axle.

So I strapped 600 lbs of sandbags to the end of the frame.



I built a highly visible "crash box" crib to carry the sand, so that shady lawyers would have a lot tougher time finding me negligent for their clients rear ending me by claiming that they couldn't see the end of the frame.



Be sure and strap any weight down. Otherwise, free weights will keep traveling at whatever highway speed you are driving at, even though you've hit the brakes.



This is another reason why sandbags are better than steel or bricks. Sandbags diffuse energy on impact, and the broad surface area is less likely to smash a window or dent your bed, even if your bed is covered with a tonneau or cap.

The 600 lbs weight aft of axle made a huge difference in ride quality for that trip.

An F-350 would not likely need as much weight, and weight placed near the tailgate will make more of an impact than weight centered directly over the rear axle.

Such an impact could have negative consequences if using too much weight, and driving over concrete freeways with expansion joints that happened to be spaced in time with the reaction frequency of the suspension at the speed you chose to travel.

I experienced this with a different F-550 while towing a heavy tongue weight tag trailer across Nevada. At a certain road speed, the front end of the truck bounced up and down uncontrollably. I traveled through 5 states on that trip, and only that one stretch of concrete freeway in NV gave me that problem. But it was problem. I could have solved it by redistributing the trailer load to have less tongue weight, but it was faster to slow down to below 45 mph instead, with flashers blinking, for the 40 more miles until the road surface normalized again.

Another advantage of sand is that it is sacrificial. It can be used for other purposes, given away, or lost. Sacks of gold would take up a lot less room in the bed, being almost twice the density of lead, but then you couldn't leave the gold behind on a trip if the extra weight proved to be inconvenient, in the way, or unnecessary. I double bagged my sandbags to keep the bags in perfect condition, and was able to "dump" all of the clean and unopened bags of sand at a local branch of the same nationwide chain home improvement store where I bought the sand, so there was no wasted material, and no wasted expense.

 

I use 4 fifty pound sand bags in the bed of my truck if I do the 800 mile trip to Oregon if not towing. The extra weight does noticeably smooth out the ride. When towing I use the same sand bags to balance or even out the load in my trailer or to increase the weight on the tow ball. They are cheap enough and don't slide around.

 

I drove an F450 from Alaska to Wisconsin and wanted a smoother ride. Put thirty 50lb bags of sand in the bed stacked over the axle between wheel wells. I didn't experiment with different load outs, as it was a lot of work. Made a huge difference. In hindsight, I wish I put 50 bags.

edit: I'm doubting my memory on exact count and weight. I know I put about 1500 pounds in the bed. If you can easily play with different weights go for it. I opted for sandbags to keep the load low and distributed. For testing, drop pallets with different amounts of weight and go for a test drive.

it was a one way trip for me, so I needed something that I could abandon and not cost a lot of money.

 

I have 12 40-pound bags of water softener salt that I was going to experiment with and see how it goes. We have State Route 60 near me that is notorious for a rough ride on just about any truck so I will load it up and go down that streatch and see how it goes.

 

I have put 2 50 pound bags of feed towards the rear of the bed on a trip. Maybe it was just my imagination, but it seemed to settle down some of the jitters, especially on every 1 ton's nemesis, concrete highways.

 

Add the weight you need by adding more old ladies, the fatter the better!

 

We just came home from 8500 miles 15 days road trip with just bags and a cooler in the bed and it was fine. I did sway out the shocks out for 5100s before i left. still have not swapped the stabilizer but that's another story. Some roads were better then others.