Towing Safely

[yooperdave]

I am moving 60 miles away. Part of the move includes me with my truck and trailers to haul most of the smaller stuff. The trip is pretty flat with well-paved roads everywhere. Intending to use all back roads and no highway travel while loaded.

I have a 2015 Chevy 2500 HD which I bought new with the 6.0 liter V8 with 35,000 miles on it. Works as intended.

I have a 7' x 12' single axle steel trailer bought new intended to tow my side x side.

I also have a double axle car hauler x 20' trailer I bought new. I added 18" high side rails so I could stack more items and have more places to tie-off.

Question: I carefully loaded the entire bed of the truck with steel racks and shelves. No real air spaces.
The weight could be north of 1,200#. The truck does not appear to be squatting very much so far.

Given this amount of load, can I still tow a fully loaded trailer? Leaning towards hooking up the smaller trailer to make the first trip.

The small trailer has around 1,000# in it. The large trailer has around 5,000# on it.

Is there a safe load chart to provide some assistance on what is considered a safe load when the truck bed is also loaded?

TIA

Yooper Dave

 

[TractorTYMe]

You should be fine, you're not even touching max capacities of your 3/4 ton as far as towing weight.

 

[sea2summit]

If your small trailers have so little weight on it I'd be tempted to move some more weight to the trailers just for a more comfortable ride. But yeah, doesn't sound like a problem as you sound like you are well below GVWR for a 2500.

 

[WinterDeere]

Trailering capacities, at least on 1/2 ton trucks, are nearly always based on 10x tongue weight. This is because the typical rule of thumb is that your minimum tongue weight needs to be at least 10% GTW to prevent trailer sway at high speed. I haven't verified, but would assume the same probably carries over to 3/4 ton pickups.

For a conservative estimate, you could simply subtract the weight of the payload in the bed from your max tongue weight, and multiply the difference x10 for available tow rating. For a more aggressive estimate, you could take difference of GVWR and total payload (passengers + fuel + racks in bed), then multiply x10 for available tow rating. Somewhere between these two estimates is your effective available tow rating, I would think.

 

[hosspuller]

Your manual will list the GCVWR... That is the total weight of the loaded truck plus loaded trailer.

Easy way to check is to go to a truck stop and get a weight on a truck scale.

GCVWR= Gross Combined Vehicle Weight Rating.

 

[WinterDeere]

Easy way to check is to go to a truck stop and get a weight on a truck scale.

I always wonder how we're supposed to get to the closest truck scale, sometimes quite a distance from home, without creating a violation the way there (and back?).