How much trailer weight can a CUT pull?

willfick · Dec 27, 2004

As others said, the tractor will pull a lot more traile than it will stop.
If the trailer has the usual electric brakes it's easy to add a hand operated control on your tractor. I put one on my old H when it was going to pull a car hauler converted to a parade float in the little mountain town of Saluda, N.C. That old tractor has very little brakes of its own; the trailer brakes added a lot of confidence.
Wm Parading close up of controller wiring hook up
I edited one of the links - if I did things right the first try what would I do with all my spare time?

kybota · Dec 30, 2004

( ( but I said I couldn't imagine my little CUT could pull them and a trailer big enough to hold 8-10 people. Especially not up an incline.
)

Should be a piece of cake.

I just did a hay ride.. I used a 16' 'car-hauler' type trailer with wood deck. I added 2x4 side and front/rear rails. Trailer empty weighs 1740# via CAT scales. Add to that the rails.. about 8 65# bales of hay, and a car battery plus invertor and xmas tree lights, and 6 aduts, and 4 kids. This was pulle dby my 1952 ford 8N tractor. ( 27hp when new.. probably 23/24 now). I have one week brake and one good brake. Unit was pulled with a drawbar lock on the 3pt. I had the tractor running at just above idle.. say.. 750-900 rpm... engine never hesitated even going up good rolling hills... Your brand new higher HP machine should run circles around my antique...

Soundguy )

Thank you (and everyone else) for the details. I guess I have a lot to learn about the capabilities of my tractor, as I really didn't think it would suffice for this. I'll definitely test how well I can stop the trailer before I pull anyone. The hayride would be next fall so I have time to figure it all out.

As for the knowing the owner manual specifications, its been two months and five requests (and five promises) but my dealer still hasn't sent me the correct manual for my tractor after shipping me the wrong one shortly after buying my tractor, so I don't have the factory specs on hand. I'm really getting bugged about that.

DaveInColorado · Dec 30, 2004

I pulled as many as 10 people in my one axle trailer using my 1250lb BX1500 on Halloween! I thought the biggest danger was if too many people got on the backside of the axle and unweighted the tongue and might have lifted the back of the tractor so I paid very close attention to how the trailer was loaded. I didn't have any problem whatsoever pulling the trailer up small inclines. I had the engine just above idle speed - 3-4 mph max. It was a huge hit at the church party so I expect I'll be doing it again next year. If I do I'll borrow a different and more stable trailer and/or limit the number of people to total less than 1000 pounds. Usually it was just 600lbs of kids.

I have a drawbar hitch and chain it down.

JeffSpencer · Dec 30, 2004

Does anybody know what that drawbar hitch is made of? I do the Halloween Hayride every year. This year, I decided to weld a Drop down hitch (turned upside down to raise the tongue height) to the drawbar to pull the 20' trailer. The metal seemed fine while I welded. When I hooked up to the trailer, the welds came off the drawbar like it was cast iron or something. I know at least one of you will snicker and make a joke about my welding...trust me, it wasn't the weld.

rambler · Dec 30, 2004

Pulling any of that? Of course you aren't straining the tractor. You aren't even 1/2 way yet. A tractor is designed to trade speed for pulling, and should be able to spin itself into the ground before losing the engine, provided you use a low gear.

As others say, there are 2 things to watch for:

Stopping. This can be greatly agrivated by the other thing:

Weight (or lack of) on the hitch.

You probably don't want more than 1000 lbs or so on the drawbar. Now, if you use a 3pt hitch that moves the weight farther back, and while the 3pt might take the weight, your front end will get light, steering might become a problem.

The bigger problem with those 3pt hitches is too _little_ weight on the hitch. There is no down pressure, so if all the people step onto the back of the 2-wheel trailer, it will flip up & all fall over.

Also, if you have a big car trailer on your tractor, and put a big weight on the rear, it will lift up on your tractor drawbar. This will make the rear axle of your tractor light, and the whole trailer heavy.

You will easily jacknife the rig trying to stop this, or lose control going down a hill. The trailer will push, the tractor will skid to the side, and bad things happen.

You tractor can pull much, much more than you have.

You need some experience & thought about _contoling_ what you are pulling, and how steering & stopping will be affected.

I would _not_ start out with a load of humans, I would get a lot more seat time learning the very different feel of a loaded trailer behind me.

The whole issue will be contoling & stopping the load. It takes experience.

--->Paul