I still have a set of clamp-on style tie downs that are similar to the stake pocket ones, except the also clamp onto the bed rail, for a bit greater stiffness and less movement. They work good. I used them with my Six-Pac 8.5' camper before I built the frame mount rear tie down. Still used them in the front.
I read all this BS about 2500 and F250's not being big enough to haul ANY TC. It is a bunch of BS!
And as far as safer, how many accidents have you personally witnessed where a 250/2500 and a TC were involved?
How many times have you been run off the road by a 250/2500 hauling a TC that could not maintain control?
How many times have you been rear ended by a 250/2500 with a TC?
There are TCs built for the owners of 250/2500 trucks.
The sky is falling! The sky is falling! ....and it is raining broken down 250/2500 trucks!
Give me a break!
========================
...and it is a good list.
Obviously hit a sensitive subject...... Don't remember saying anything about a 250/2500 or anything else.
I think it is a GREAT list!!! Just wanted to contribute my $0.02 worth. No offence intended.
Maybe we will meet up one day and I'll buy you a beer and tell you a story about my Ford F250, an 11 foot camper, a boat on a trailer and a 6% grade on the trans Canada Highway!! In those days I didn't know any better and came very close to hurting myself and family. Now I know better so I try to do better.
I thought it was a good list for a newby. Most people just decide to buy a camper and trust what the salesman tells them. That is a huge mistake, since all they want to do is collect their commission. That's when they get on a TC forum to find out how it is supposed to be done correctly.
coasties1 wrote: I thought it was a good list for a newby. Most people just decide to buy a camper and trust what the salesman tells them. That is a huge mistake, since all they want to do is collect their commission. That's when they get on a TC forum to find out how it is supposed to be done correctly.
Man I wish I had read this before buying our 2006 Okanagan 811-SL new. That has worked great on our 2004 2500HD Crew Cab 4x4 duramax. Thousands of miles on it with a lot of trips. Even out west not an issue. Even towing a 20ft boat for most of those years with this 2500HD that can's handle heavy campers. But OOh ours only weights 3290 empty. so pushing 4000 lbs loaded and then the boat behind that.
Even going over black Mountains it acts like the camper is not there. But I will say Air bags would be on my next truck even if its a F=550 . They do so much for any truck, as in level one out where your not blinding everyone at night. Plus helps out the ride so much.
Will sure be happy Friday when I deliver it and then I'm not out of control on the roads. LOL HAHA Man what a laugh.. It handles better then a lot of class 8 trucks I used to drive. Tri Axle Dump trucks with 74,000 lbs sitting on the tail end of just a tractor.
2004 Duramax/allison Trans C/C 4x4
2012 Landmark Key Largo
2008 Lund 1825 Pro Guide Tiller, With a Evinrude 90 HP E-Tec
I sense there is a lot of folks on here that do not understand the margin error. Matching truck to load is just smart. Can we overload and dodge the bullet of catastrophic failure. Sure and if that is how you want live then that is up to you. I do thank God that none of you appear to be designing planes or crucial systems that failure would result in multiple deaths and damage to entire systems...like a plane crash.
As a combat soldier (Infantry) and a war fighter, then as a computer engineer and architec I I am familiar with working at extremes. In the data centers I designed...at the high end we gave a '5x9's' guarantee, that is less than 3 minutes of down per YEAR.
Yea we could have lowered the standards for the food we set in combat, the weapons we used and even the can openers we carried...but I still have my old 'P 38' US Army issue C ration can opener and its still opening cans. I could used a OC-3 fiber optic connection to my data center instead of a OC-192, could have used a no fail-over design on the front end and saved over 1/2 million $ in hardware costs. But its YOU medical records the doctor is trying to pull from the data center as you lay dying in the OR....I guess a 30 min download would be acceptable, or you financial records and a 7 day wait for a check to be deposited would be fine.
I was out in Anza-Borrego, Ca for a few weeks and at the camp site next to mine was a guy in a Land Rover pulling at trailer. Its a nice trailer, all stainless steel and quiet fancy. Its modeled after the old WWII era Jeep 1/4 trailer. We were talking and I asked him what was the load rating on his trailer, he chuckled a bit and said 750 lbs...you know, 250 lbs more than YOURS (mine is a M101 Cdn Army trailer rated at 500 lb load). I laughed and said big difference, my trailer is only rated 500 lbs but its BUILT to 3500 lb specs, bet you did not know that? He did not. Then he said well mine is SS and yours is just steel, yours will rust. Yea mine will but these trailers have been around since the 40's and are in big demand, I can buy this for $1200 bucks and yours was about $13,000.
We moved on and the next to last day I was there we had taken a trail that took us to the outer edges and into the bowels of Anza-Borrego. WAY deep. We are near the end and go around a bend and there in the trail sits that Land Rover and the SS $13,000 trailer dead in the trail. The suspension on the trailer had broken. We stopped and asked if we could do anything and he said no, his friends were in town waiting on a FEDX for a spare part...he had been sitting there on the trail for 3 days. Monday he was supposed to be back at work in San Fran and he ain't gonna make unless that part gets delivered today.
Point being his trailer was optimized and 750 lbs was all you were gonna load in that puppy. I know the company and know the owner. He makes a great trailer for off road, but the margin for error is thin. Same if you overload your rig no matter what kind it is. As you head toward that Gross weight you are running out of margin, simple as that. Folks push the edge all the time, I have done it, did not like it but I had little choice at the time...but given a choice I want to have some margin for error between me and bad day. How much is up to you as an individual...
Don
17 Oaks Ranch, Texas
US Army (RET)
'11 F350 4x4, CC, LWB, DRW, Lariat
AF 1150, solar, satellite
Vietnam Combat Veteran
17oaks wrote: I sense there is a lot of folks on here that do not understand the margin error. Matching truck to load is just smart. Can we overload and dodge the bullet of catastrophic failure. Sure and if that is how you want live then that is up to you. I do thank God that none of you appear to be designing planes or crucial systems that failure would result in multiple deaths and damage to entire systems...like a plane crash.
I design Bridges for Air Planes.
Also as I posted my truck drives way better then class 8 trucks that I drove.
"Also as I posted my truck drives way better then class 8 trucks that I drove."
My question would be. Does/did, it stop as well also? I've found that most of the responses tend to be "It'll PULL it. Plenty of Power". A lot of folks tend to forget the stopping part until they encounter the 'oh ****' moment.
Hoppe
2011 Dodge 1500 C'boy Caddy
2000 Jayco C 28' Ford chassis w V-10 E450
Doghouse 36' or so Trophy Classic TT
17oaks wrote: I sense there is a lot of folks on here that do not understand the margin error. Matching truck to load is just smart. Can we overload and dodge the bullet of catastrophic failure. Sure and if that is how you want live then that is up to you. I do thank God that none of you appear to be designing planes or crucial systems that failure would result in multiple deaths and damage to entire systems...like a plane crash.
As a combat soldier (Infantry) and a war fighter, then as a computer engineer and architec I I am familiar with working at extremes. In the data centers I designed...at the high end we gave a '5x9's' guarantee, that is less than 3 minutes of down per YEAR.
Yea we could have lowered the standards for the food we set in combat, the weapons we used and even the can openers we carried...but I still have my old 'P 38' US Army issue C ration can opener and its still opening cans. I could used a OC-3 fiber optic connection to my data center instead of a OC-192, could have used a no fail-over design on the front end and saved over 1/2 million $ in hardware costs. But its YOU medical records the doctor is trying to pull from the data center as you lay dying in the OR....I guess a 30 min download would be acceptable, or you financial records and a 7 day wait for a check to be deposited would be fine.
I was out in Anza-Borrego, Ca for a few weeks and at the camp site next to mine was a guy in a Land Rover pulling at trailer. Its a nice trailer, all stainless steel and quiet fancy. Its modeled after the old WWII era Jeep 1/4 trailer. We were talking and I asked him what was the load rating on his trailer, he chuckled a bit and said 750 lbs...you know, 250 lbs more than YOURS (mine is a M101 Cdn Army trailer rated at 500 lb load). I laughed and said big difference, my trailer is only rated 500 lbs but its BUILT to 3500 lb specs, bet you did not know that? He did not. Then he said well mine is SS and yours is just steel, yours will rust. Yea mine will but these trailers have been around since the 40's and are in big demand, I can buy this for $1200 bucks and yours was about $13,000.
We moved on and the next to last day I was there we had taken a trail that took us to the outer edges and into the bowels of Anza-Borrego. WAY deep. We are near the end and go around a bend and there in the trail sits that Land Rover and the SS $13,000 trailer dead in the trail. The suspension on the trailer had broken. We stopped and asked if we could do anything and he said no, his friends were in town waiting on a FEDX for a spare part...he had been sitting there on the trail for 3 days. Monday he was supposed to be back at work in San Fran and he ain't gonna make unless that part gets delivered today.
Point being his trailer was optimized and 750 lbs was all you were gonna load in that puppy. I know the company and know the owner. He makes a great trailer for off road, but the margin for error is thin. Same if you overload your rig no matter what kind it is. As you head toward that Gross weight you are running out of margin, simple as that. Folks push the edge all the time, I have done it, did not like it but I had little choice at the time...but given a choice I want to have some margin for error between me and bad day. How much is up to you as an individual...
Good post.
I have built many equipment trailers in the last 35 years. When I design a trailer, I design and build it to operate at it's GVW limit. In fact, I design them for well over what I rate them at. That doesn't mean that someone won't violate the GVW rating by a significant margin, but you can't control what folks do with it once it is sold.
Airstream builds a single axle travel trailer rated at 4,500#. It is almost 20' long including the tongue. The frame is built out of 3" structural channel. I know that the shell offers some form of structural rigidity, but I would never consider making that trailer frame out of 3" channel, even with the consideration of the shell. For approximately 150# or so, they could make that trailer out of 5" channed and put a 5,200-6,000# axle under it. The wet weight of this particular trailer is over 4,000#. They have around a 350-400# useful load when it is wet. I doubt that the trailer has much of a margin of safety over the maximum gvw. How many of us think that the buyers won't put more than 400# in the trailer when they go on a long trip? My point is that many manufacturers and dealers don't help the buying public get the right setup. It seems that many of them are looking at a profit, and not a long term safely setup RV that the buyer can enjoy for years. By the way, I don't intend to pick on AS, because there are many manufacturers that are worse.
Ford F-350 4x4 Diesel
1988 Avion Triple Axle Trailer
1969 Avion C-11 Camper
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