I got a 6x12 10K dump trailer earlier this year. Due to tow limits of my 1/2-ton truck, I never purchase more than 3 tons of material. When loaded properly, the trailer tows great. But I'd say 80% of the time, the local yards load me with a forward bias, creating too much tongue weight. I picked up three loads today and they were all forward biased, some worse than others.
I installed a W.D.H. to help in these situations, and it does what it is supposed to but won't cure poor loading or too much tongue weight. While pulling onto the scale for my first load this morning, I carefully noted the measurements as each axle went onto the scale, before and after being loaded. While eating lunch I did some math. The trailer has only 300# tongue weight when empty, which matches what I measured with a bathroom scale a couple months ago. When loaded too far forward, tongue weight was 1140#, more than my truck is meant to handle and visually way too much even with a W.D.H. If loaded evenly, it should have been in the 700-800# range.
I'm trying to decide how to deal with this. At this point, my only solution is to carefully raise the trailer bed to shift some of the material rearward, but that is a pain to do and needs careful judgement (not all loads slide the same). I am wondering if I should fab up some sort of sealed chamber at the front of the trailer bed to block off volume so that material cannot physically occupy the front couple feet of the bed (it would have to be angled to force material to flow to the rear). Somehow I need to prevent operators from loading with a forward bias and the only solution I can think of is to eliminate that volume. Any other ideas?
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