Just wondering how a Dually truck will do offroad compared to a Single Rear Wheel truck? I am getting my first Dually this next week, 03 3500 DRW quad cab 4x4 and was thinking about it off road. Do they do very well, also how about in Snow?

 

I am not speaking from experience here, but the general consensus is that a dually will not perform as well in slippery situations as a SRW. The weight is spread across 4 tires in the rear instead of only 2, thereby hendering traction.


Duallys do better than SRWs for towing/stability. But that is the only advantage that im aware of.

 

Thanks, that's kinda what I figured.

 

Maybe inn snow that's true. I got a 06' reg cab 4x4 dually farm truck and it pulls much better than my 04' or 98' off-road. You got 2 extra tires grabbing for dirt back there. It's a manual also. Low range pulling the around the stock trailer is awesome!

 

in my opinion if you have a "bottom" to the surface your driving on (such as a road, or a mud pit with hard pack under the mud) a single wheeled truck with (esp with very tall and very narrow tires) will do much better then anything else because it will dig trough the crud to get to a hard surface.

Now if you dont have a "bottom" more and or wider tires to help float over it will help. Keep in mind though that all your weight is over your front end where you still only have 1 tire per side and thats whats going to sink in.

so in the end it probbaly dosent really matter for "off road" since you're not likely to take a truck that big and heavy into seriously deep goop.

Thats my opinion on it anyway.

 

I don't have any problems with my Drw. I have had it in mud (black hill country mud) deep enough that a 20' flatbed trailer mudded up and would not spin. The basic mudding problem as I see it is clean up and catching rocks in your duals (and you will). I've had my back duals look like huge racing slicks with mud pies being extruded from the hubcap holes. Turning radius and width are the major factors, plan on scraping fenders on trees, rocks, braches etc and spending 2 hours with a hi pressure washer. When you do get stuck plan on getting a tractor to pull you out. Make sure you get a limitted slip. If I were planning on a lot of offroading I would go with a 3500srw and stuff the biggest widest most aggressive tire I could find on it. I've had mine on ice but I was pulling 8000 lbs and didn't have any problems. Same with snow. Preferably I'd take the srw for ice and snow.

Weights a big factor of road, remember if 1 tons were made to fly Boeing would make them, soft landings are not in the playbook.

Garry,

IAFF L51

 

iced or snow covered hwy....I'm gonna go with SRW

sand- probably DRW

mud- depends on the mud...but probably SRW more often than not


...but like stated above, these CTD's do not like offroading...too heavy (especially in front)

one thing nice about a dually is the back tires are less likely to drop into a rut made by the host of SRW's

just my stupid opinioin

 

A lot will depend on the terrain you'll be driving on. As Texas Crewd stated above, rocks caught between the duals can be a real problem. If they are jagged and you don't catch them in time and remove them they WILL tear out a sidewall. Because of that, out here at the mines even a lot of the big 18-wheelers run oversize single tires instead of duals.