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Who says you can’t pull a 5th wheel


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34 minutes ago, heymrdjCW said:

 

34 minutes ago, heymrdjCW said:

Eat crow? I’m sorry, i don’t speak back woods trailer trash! 


You weren’t just having fun, you’re just hurt that you have to eat crow and you’re getting called out on it. Nice job back pedaling. You can spread your fake news elsewhere.

 

 

 

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Too bad some members can't share their information without derogatory comments directed at members with differing opinions. We're discussing fifth wheel trailers towed by 1/2 tons.  My next trailer will likely be a fifth wheel and found some of the content of this thread useful.  The references to others as fools, stupid or having a low IQ serves no useful purpose and takes away from the integrity of this forum.

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Too bad some members can't share their information without derogatory comments directed at members with differing opinions. We're discussing fifth wheel trailers towed by 1/2 tons.  My next trailer will likely be a fifth wheel and found some of the content of this thread useful.  The references to others as fools, stupid or having a low IQ serves no useful purpose and takes away from the integrity of this forum.

It wouldn’t be the first time this has happened. Every time I disagree with someone in here they start getting hostile and get to name calling, ridiculous but it is what it is.


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I just had to ask a TX DPS officer today about it and he too agreed with me. He said if he finds it in his judgment that it’s an unsafe load he’ll have it towed with tickets.


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46 minutes ago, TXGREEK said:

Every time I disagree with someone in here they start getting hostile and get to name calling, ridiculous but it is what it is.

Oh please.  Cry me a river.  The very first foul/hostile comment in the entire thread was:

 

14 hours ago, TXGREEK said:

Slap the emoji90.png out of someone that says that a fifth wheel is half ton towable....

Is that literally a picture of poop?

 

43 minutes ago, TXGREEK said:

I just had to ask a TX DPS officer today about it and he too agreed with me. He said if he finds it in his judgment that it’s an unsafe load he’ll have it towed with tickets.

 

I'm guessing his judgement is significantly better than yours.  Sure, a cop who wants to keep his job longer than a week is going to make a habit out of pulling people over, writing tickets and towing their trailers away...for people under their listed towing specs with nothing obviously wrong with the setup...  Get real.

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I'm guessing his judgement is significantly better than yours.  Sure, a cop who wants to keep his job longer than a week is going to make a habit out of pulling people over, writing tickets and towing their trailers away...for people under their listed towing specs with nothing obviously wrong with the setup...  Get real.


That’s what they’re paid for, keeping us safe. Especially from cheap irresponsible people with obvious zero respect for anyone else on the road. I’m not interested in the least bit what you or any other persons thoughts are on this subject, it’s a waste of time. I’ve owned a huge amount of trucks and SUV’s in my life and never once have I ever heard of anything as stupid as this.
Btw, when I said something funny earlier about slapping the [emoji90] out of someone towing a fifth wheel in a half ton I didn’t direct it to any one person. As one of my employees mentioned to me, It’s like trying to advise a group of kindergartners on how to invest, some people are just set in their ways no matter what or who their actions affect.


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I find it funny when someone acts like an expert, when clearly they know very little about the situation.  The OP simply posted a picture of a half ton pulling a fifth wheel.  If that truck is within its towing specs and weight limits, it is safe to tow.  Nothing a sponsor or police officer can do about it, if the truck is within its limits.  If your argument is GM doesn't show a 1/2 ton fifth wheel tow in it's downloadable tow guide, it doesn't show it for a 3/4 ton either.  Does that mean a 3/4 truck shouldn't be tow a fifth wheel?  The only one pictured with a fifth wheel is a 1 ton. 

 

As far as people getting butt hurt about others not agreeing with their opinions, get over it!  If you don't like it leave the forum.  If you can't admit when your wrong about something, and someone calls you out on it,  don't get all butt hurt.  If you can't handle being wrong, you probably should just stop posting.  

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4 hours ago, TXGREEK said:

That’s what they’re paid for, keeping us safe.

I hope he got paid a bonus for waiting until you were walking away before rolling his eyes.  I guarantee you, he has written exactly zero tickets for the things you are saying he should.

4 hours ago, TXGREEK said:

 people with obvious zero respect for anyone else on the road.

 

You don't show respect for others on the road by steering them away from safer choices by spewing misinformation like a broken sewer pipe.  If you want safer roads, you want more people towing 5th wheels, fewer towing long bumper pull trailers.  They are inherently safer.  The next time you are on the road and you see a trailer swaying like it's an accident waiting to happen, think to yourself "I wish he was towing a 5th wheel instead, I would be safer!"

4 hours ago, TXGREEK said:

I’m not interested in the least bit what you or any other persons thoughts are on this subject,

 

Yes, that's quite obvious.  But you should be.  Since your mind is closed to the Engineering explanations of why, maybe you ought to open your mind a bit and listen to any of the thousands of people out there who have switched from bumper pull to 5th wheels.  It's really hard to find a single one of them who agrees with your contention that they are somehow less safe and "throw the truck around" more.  Because they don't.

4 hours ago, TXGREEK said:

some people are just set in their ways

 

Glad to see you getting around to some self-reflection.

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Glad to see you getting around to some self-reflection.


I own fifth wheels, fifth wheels are safer to tow, with 3/4 ton and one ton trucks not half tons. Half ton trucks don’t have the pay load neither the front end, brakes, rear end axle, etc to handle it. Yeah, my reflection on this discussion is you can take the idiot out of the trailer park but not the trailer park out of the idiot!



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I've got a dumb question, why are we not discussing payload?


Some of it was discussed above. GM seems to be taking it into account as according to the 1500 conventional vs 5th wheel charts, 5th wheel gets derated as 15% payload reaches payload capacity for the model. Example is the 4wd Double Cab 4x4, 9,000 5th wheel or 9,200 conventional. 15% kingpin weight puts you at 1350lbs of payload when the trailer is 9,000lbs (if balance was perfect anyways). These numbers are supposedly SAE certified, which means the 1500 did this on a 12% grade to get these numbers.
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6 hours ago, TXGREEK said:

Half ton trucks don’t have the pay load neither the front end, brakes, rear end axle, etc to handle it.

Nothing but more made up anti-facts.  For example, please explain how you reason the same brakes that are safe for a bumper pull up to 12,500 lbs are not safe for a 5th wheel of 7000 lbs?  Even after I explained how a 5th wheel makes better use of the truck's brakes by not overloading the axle with the smaller brakes and removing weight from the axle that does the steering and has bigger brakes?  You do realize SAE J2807 has emergency stopping and braking stability tests, right?  They even disconnect the trailer brakes and rely 100% on the truck's brakes for some tests.  GM and the SAE say they're golden for a 5th wheel up to 11,600 lbs.  You say they are dangerous at 7,000 lbs.  Why would anybody believe you?

 

If you had a reasoned technical argument, that would be one thing.  Brake force distribution calculations, dynamic weight distribution vs. rate of deceleration, yaw stability under combined turning and braking, etc, we could have an interesting discussion on your technical reasons why you think the SAE testing standards are inadequate.  Discussions such as that are interesting and worthwhile, but it's clear if you had any technical reasoning behind the things you believe you would have said them already.  Trying to have a technical discussion with a monkey throwing crap at the wall is unlikely to be productive.

 

Front end?  How much weight do you think a 5th wheel puts on the front end?  It depends upon hitch location obviously but it will typically be between 0 and 100 lbs.  Even negative for people using extenders, etc, for short boxes.  Yes, dynamically some weight is transferred to the front during braking, which is a good thing if you want the vehicle to stop.  Under what loads and rates of deceleration are your calculations telling you it's too much?  Oops, almost forgot and thought I was speaking to somebody with a technical arguement.

 

Payload, rear axle...  It's funny how the stickers, owner's manual and the trucks ratings are golden rules until somebody gets caught talking out of the wrong end.  Then he claims they shouldn't be believed, that the Engineers at GM and the SAE are somehow from a "trailer park."  Have you spoken to AAM to see how much weight that axle was actually designed to handle?  You believe GM is overrating it because _____?

 

The best thing you could do for your credibility at this point is to stop digging.  This notion you have that 5th wheels "throw a truck around" more than a bumper pull of similar size is laughable to anybody who has actually towed both.  Instead of admitting you may have been wrong about that, the more you try and defend it the more laughable you become.

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7 hours ago, Bobaloo22 said:

I've got a dumb question, why are we not discussing payload?

Yes, that's always going to be a big consideration as it will often be the limiting factor.  People, especially those looking at 5th wheels, really need to pay attention to not just the dry pin weight but where weight is going to be added in the trailer (storage, water tanks, etc).  If you look at "1/2 ton towable" 5th wheels (there really are a lot of them out there advertised as such) it does vary somewhat, but they generally fall between 15% and 20%.

 

However, many with bumper pull TTs find they like up to 15% of tongue weight in order to get the trailer to pull acceptably.  So you can certainly expect it to be higher with a 5th wheel, but not necessarily that much higher.  So if you're choosing between say, 18% loaded directly on the rear axle vs 12-15% loaded 4.5 feet behind the rear axle, there's no question which the truck will handle better as long as you're not over your ratings.  And with a 5th wheel, you won't have a camper shell, pile of luggage, firewood or likely anything anything else in the back of the truck of substance so that's something else to consider.

 

As always though, one has to keep in mind what the ratings actually mean--the limit with the perfect setup.  It's not a guarantee you can tow any trailer up to that much weight, usually you can't.

 

You really need to watch this with other types of trailers--goosenecks that are equipement trailers, horse trailers, dump trailers, etc.  With those trailers it is often easy to exceed 20% by a long way depending upon how it is loaded.  It would be very easy to far exceed your payload even with a trailer much lighter than your rating so people need to use their brains a little bit when doing such things. 

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