Dodgezilla

So a friend of mine was gonna move to Tampa Florida from the DC area. That's usually farther than I want to go but I went to look at how much stuff he had. He didn't have much furniture but had a lot of boxes and a lot of outdoor stuff. I knew we would fill this trailer and still have to use our 10' flatbed too. I decided I would do the job. We showed up on moving day and they were all ready to go. It's nice to have an organized person to move so you aren't having to pack stuff into boxes for them as you go. We had to go to their storage unit which didn't appear to have too much in it but as it was being unloaded it just seemed to keep coming and coming and coming. I loaded it super tight and it ended up using about 1/3 of the trailer. At that point I started getting worried that everything may not fit. We got over to the house and walked through and all of us agreed that we would never get it all in the trailer. Well, for me that is a challenge. I had committed to do this so we started loading up. This was about the tightest load I have ever put in the trailer. I had just put 4 brand new Carlyle D-Rated bias ply American made tires on the trailer so I was not worried. We continued loading and in the end I got everything that was in the house onto the trailer. This was definitely a feat, I can tell you that. Even with the Timbrens the truck was squatting bad but the trailer tires were not squatting at all. I just knew I had made the right choice with my trailer tire purchase. We loaded all the outdoor stuff on the flatbed and got everything on just as I had promised. This is where the adventure begins.....................

Dodgezilla pulled the load to my house just fine but for some reason I had no trailer brakes. It was raining and the first intersection I came to the trailer started pushing me around. Luckily I was going pretty slow. I decided to take it very easy so I would have no incidents and did indeed make it to my house safely. We were not leaving for a few days so I had time to figure out the problem with the brakes. It turned out to be a simple adjustment that I would have known about had I bought a new brake controller with instructions with it. So, problem one was no problem anymore. Egts stayed in check and the truck pulled the load just fine once I got rolling. It did take about 2000rpms just to get the trailer rolling from a stop. I was very unhappy with how much it took to pull this thing. Lots of stop and go traffic caused my trans temps to stay up in the 225 degree range in the pan. The trans light never did come on in the dash though.

Thursday morning rolled around and we pulled out about 4:00am. I knew I was overweight but did not think it was more than 2000lbs or so. I decided that we would just take it easy and start the trip at 60mph and move up to 65 mph once we determined that the truck would handle it. BTW, the little trailer was being pulled by our friend's Ford Lightning. The truck was pulling just fine for about 30 miles when BOOM!!!! one of the tires explodes and blows off the rim! I pull over and immediately get a bad feeling in my stomach. We are able to follow the plume of smoke coming from the tire to retrieve it from the brush on the shoulder. When we get it to the front of the truck to inspect it in the headlights I notice something strange. It has the same part number as all the other tires but the thing only has a C-Rating on it!! I put my first spare on and decide that maybe it just gave out because it was too low rated of a tire for this load. Back on the road and all seems well. We are only doing 60 mph at this point and have decided that is as fast as we will go even though we have 900 miles to drive. 20 minutes later and BOOM!!! tire # 2 lets go. My stomach is like ! I tell my brother we have to go back. We put on the last spare which happens to be a radial. That is scaring me now too because it is squatting a good bit. We exit the highway at 35 mph and start driving back home on a rural highway at 35mph all the way (About 70 miles or so). About 2/3rds of the way home we pass a moving company with a scale and I just have to know how much this thing weighs. I pull on and am amazed that i am tipping the scales at 26150lb!!! That puts my 10,000 gvw trailer at 18,000lb! I swear I don't know how these 2540lb tires are handling this even if there are four of them! And they are not squatting at all but the leaf-springs are pretty much straight so the tires are absorbing every bump I hit and getting very hot. We call a tire place and he says he can get us some E-Rated tires that will fix this problem but those are only rated at 2820lb so I know that is still not a safe option. I continue on my way home... We decide to get a rental truck and to put as much of this stuff on it and then pull the Ford Lightning on a car carrier. Then all the stuff on our little flatbed will be floated at the back of the big trailer. This ends up taking all day to do plus I still had to go back to the trailer tire store and complain about the C-rated tire. They deny it came from them and refuse to replace it because they don't even sell a C-rated tire in that size. I don't complain too much because I know the trailer is so overweight. I ponder over replacing all of the tires with the E-Rated ones but since I have pulled a bunch of weight out of the trailer I just buy two more D-Rated tires and one rim because the first blowout killed the one when it dragged down the highway. We get all done and decide to leave at midnight...
We pull out and all is well getting to the highway when we come upon a copper with someone pulled over. As we drive by, one of the cops decides to pull my brother over and hassle him because he says he did not move over far enough into the other lane to avoid the officers. He decides to just give him a verbal warning and lets him go. At this point the truck is pulling the trailer much better and we start out at 60mph for a couple hundred miles. After the first fill-up I decide we will go 65mph. That goes fine too for a couple hundred miles. Next fill-up I decide to makeup some time and go 70mph. The tires were not getting hot but they were kind of warm. Well, 70 mph was just too much and I blew one more tire!!! That was it! I saw a billboard for a tire store and pulled in to that exit and bought my E-Rated radial tires. Wow! what a difference they made. They are a much beefier tire and do not get warm at all. I still kept it at 70 mph tops and we eventually made it there 17 hours later. My EGTs never once during this entire ordeal got over 1100 degrees. Even when the trailer was sitting at 18,000lb. I think I have it set up just right except that it could use a better converter. I need to change the fluid now too.
Coming home I was not messing around. I set the cruise at 76 mph and hauled my behind all the way home in 14 hours exactly. I got 11.5 mpg going down loaded and about 10.5 coming back empty.
The moral of my story is that I had planned on putting 7000lb axles on the trailer and using my spare Dodge Ram wheels but just kept putting it off and now I have spent on tires what the axles would have cost me....

madhat

Dang, dude. Glad you're safe. Gotta know what weight you're pulling.

MikeyB

Man, that sucked.

At least you know that the new tires can handle the load!

MikeyB

Dodgezilla

Well, even the new tires would not have handled the original load. I agree that I should have weighed it first though. I actually tried to get it weighed on the one day when I had time but the local scales were all closed.
Live and learn I guess.....

bkrukow

Man, Ime glad I dident have that luck moving my mom home last year. She wanted to move back to Iowa from south central Colorado, to be closer to my 2 year old son. Its around 850-900 miles one way. I rented a 24 foot enclosed trailer localy and went and got her. When I picked up the trailer I asked if he had a spare and he said no he had never needed one. I thought to myself oh great no way ime making it all the way out there and back with no blow outs. I hooked on early eavning and took off. I made it a few miles down the road and realized the trailer breaks didnt work at all. I was a little ticked considering he had flat out told me they worked when I asked abought it. I would have turned around and went back but it is the only trailer in the area big enough to haul everything in one load and they where closed so he wasent around to do anything abought it. Against my better judgment I went ahead and went out and loaded her up. I got all her furnature and boxes of stuff and her car in the trailer and headed home. I never did get to weigh it but it wasent lite. We made it abought 45 miles back and stopped for breakfast and when we came out the trailer was leaning to the passenger side. I walked around there and sure enough there was a flat tire and no spare on a Sunday morning. Luckily we were in Colorado Springs so we went the only open tire place(walmart). I told them I wanted the cheapest black, round, holds air they had. Ten minutes and $45 latter we were on our way. I figured we would have more problems but we made it the rest of the way home with no isues.

WestTN

What air pressure were you running? The tire holds the air in, but the air supports the load.

Dodgezilla

I had them maxed out since the load was heavy. Unfortunately the leafsprings were pretty much straight under the trailer so the tires were the only shock absorption I had. Not an ideal situation with that much weight. My brother was behind me and he said the trailer had no bounce at all even when I hit a bump. It sure pulled nice and smooth that way though...

Spooler

Dodgezilla, you sound like a good friend of mine. If you go anywhere with him, it's an adventure......LOL

Dodgezilla

LOL. It's really just the opposite. I even carry a spare for my handtruck!!! I carry two trailer spares, just in case, and I even had my big floor jack so we could easily change a flat. That trailer was so heavy that even my 7000lb floorjack could not raise it on it's own and I had to pull the bottle jack out too....
I'll tell you one thing though. Those 5200lb axles held up just fine! I was sure I was gonna bend them once I found out how much weight I had on there...

HOV

**** man, glad you got home in one piece. That's just insane.

1-2-3

As soon as you said "for me that is a challenge" I knew you were going to end your story with blown tires.

Dodgezilla

HaHa!! Yeah, I should have known that too.

The truck pulled the load just fine too so I was happy about that. It started out slow but did fine once rolling.....

I'm glad the only thing that got hurt by all this was my wallet......

BLACKBEAR

Well if you bought trailer tires they are only rated at 65 Mph. If you would had bought LT then you can run over 65 mph. Did you have load levers? That would have help put some weight on the front axle.

Dodgezilla

I was using my weight distribution hitch but it only did so much. And there was way too much weight on the front axle so I needed to transfer some to the rear wheels on the trailer. It helped some but not enough.
I was going to go to LT tires but I've just read too many things about the sidewalls not being designed for the dragging that occurs when making tight turns on pavement especially when loaded. I've never read of a blowout due to this but I did not want to find out the hard way. Instead I found out the hard way that the D-Rated bias plies cannot handle twice their rated weight......