How to prevent overloading your trailer

   / How to prevent overloading your trailer #1  

5030tinkerer

Gold Member
Joined
Dec 27, 2005
Messages
432
Location
Iowa
Tractor
Kubota GL3830/GL5030
The "stuck while delivering topsoil" thread tangent about paying by the yard or ton got me thinking about another problem - preventing your trailer from being overloaded. I have a 5x10 steel bed utility trailer with an axle, hubs, leaf springs, and tires designed for a 3500# load. I don't know how much the trailer itself weighs, but I'd guess in the 600-800# range, leaving me with 2700-2900# for payload. I went to the gravel yard the other day to pick up some 1" limestone. They weighed me in and sent me over to the rock piles to get loaded. At the point that the trailer "looked" like it was beginning to bow down with the weight, I had the loader stop. When I drove to the scale, I learned that I had picked up 4100# of rock. While the trailer drove just fine for the 15 mile or so journey back, this extra load surely couldn't have been good for it. Any ideas on how to prevent this in the future?
Each product density is different, so you can't use volume of material as a guide. All I can think of is getting down low during the loading and keeping an eye on the leaf springs to see how they are holding up (at 4100#, they were near flat). The tires themselves maybe squatted just slightly. You guys know that those huge loaders only take a few token seconds to take you from empty to way overfull. Any tips out there?
I haven't found any yards set up to load you at the scale.
 
   / How to prevent overloading your trailer #2  
If you wanted to spend money, they have scales that you can permanently fix between bed and frame like these Universal otherwise watching the springs is what I do leave about 1-2 of travel between axle/spring plate and frame and let the safety factor built into the trailer take care of the rest.
 
   / How to prevent overloading your trailer #3  
Are the other places to get your rocks? In one mine here they are dead accurate with us, and very nice and helpful, with the other, we asked for 4 tons and got 5.

Probably not an option, but if there was someone else available?

my next thought would be measuring while you added some known weights. Pick a reference point that would stay consistent (a point on the fender directly over the center of the wheel, with the vehicle attached to the truck you would normally pull with) then add weights to the trailer and continue to measure. You could either extrapolate out, or just keep going till you got 3000 lbs or whatever on there. Not sure how much difference you will see.

If it was me, I would then write my baseline measurement on the fender as well as my "max load"
 
   / How to prevent overloading your trailer #4  
All you can do is measure the squat of the trailer. I would get out of the truck and watch it settle and also take that chance to be sure that the operator is loading the material in the center of the trailer.

If it really bothers you to be overweight then you can do light loads where you intentionally underload.

When handloading my pickup with half man rock for a wall I would load until the leafs hit the snubbers as a reference point. It was really accurate and repeatable to get a particular payload that way.
 
   / How to prevent overloading your trailer #5  
my little 5x10 single axle trailer at the local quary. they dont bother to weight it. its $10 min. drive in drop my $10 bill on the table and drive to the pile i want....

then hand signal the operater when ive had enough. (based on squat/sag)

drive out.
 
   / How to prevent overloading your trailer #6  
The guys in the office and the guy on the loader are worlds apart. I went to buy a couple concrete blocks 2'widex3'tallx4'long. Guy in office says $60 dollars apiece. I give him my 120 dollars and go get my trailer and come back to pick them up. Guy on loader says you can't haul both of these (I had 16' trailer). He tells me they weigh 4000 pounds each. He set 1 in the center of the trailer, I told him I would be back for the other one when I figured out how I was going to unload this one. So check before letting someone tear up your stuff.
 
   / How to prevent overloading your trailer #7  
Wet anything but straight rock weighs more.... so don't buy when it's rained.
If your getting the same material regularly you will figure it out in a few trips what your load should look like.
That's the only safety issue I have with a single axle dump trailer (blowing a tire on an overloaded trailer)
 
   / How to prevent overloading your trailer #8  
I'd think you'd want a tandem axle set up for any dump trailer and probably dual wheels besides but I always overbuild everything.
 
   / How to prevent overloading your trailer #9  
wushaw said:
Wet anything but straight rock weighs more.... so don't buy when it's rained.
If your getting the same material regularly you will figure it out in a few trips what your load should look like.
That's the only safety issue I have with a single axle dump trailer (blowing a tire on an overloaded trailer)

Not only that, but you feel the trailer more when you hit brakes on wet road.

I always load less ad drive slower when it rains.

pretty much load it by the eye - when I feel it sits low enough I give a signal to the loader. Also always check tire pressure before going to quary and always have a showel to move the sand or whatever around in the trailer.
 
 
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