"Kate" wrote in message
...
On 7/13/2010 10:02 PM, Kate wrote:
Hi All,

My Dad is loaning me his 1989 Dodge Ram, the sports model so it is not a
huge truck, to haul concrete and posts, etc. for a new vinyl gate and
fence. I just finished gating in one end of my back yard, but now am
ready to do the other end.

I need 15 bags of pre-mixed concrete. Each bag weighs 60 pounds.
Can this little truck handle 900 pounds?

I sure don't want to risk damaging this truck. You may get a chuckle out
of it, but Dad keeps it spit shined, and it only has 21,000 miles on it.
The only thing I really miss in it is that there are no air bags.

I will be hauling the concrete 24 miles from my home.

Thanks for your help.

Kate
Wow, thanks everyone for all the great posts. I even got some good
chuckles.

My problem has been solved, thanks to Dear Dad.

This morning he had the air in the tires checked, filled the truck up
with gas, and brought home 15 sixty-pound bags of concrete. Then he
said, "Here you go, it is a gift". He got it in town, one mile from home,
whereas I was going to go to Ziggy's where I have to go tomorrow night to
pick up the rest of the vinyl gate/fence material. My plan was to fill
the truck up with gas on my way home. I will still use the truck for the
rest of the material, but I owe my parents a very nice dinner in the near
future.

My parents are the best, and everyone here is too.

Many thanks.

Kate

When I was a kid in the sixties in Las Vegas, the thing was to take a pickup
and go out to the sand dunes which are now in the center of town and pick up
"blowsand" to spread for lawns. It was free, and worth twice what was paid
for it. It was worthless topsoil with .05% organic matter, but no one was
into gardening in a technical sense then. We loaded the half ton pickups to
the rails, as no one had the money to buy a 3/4 ton pickup. Probably 2,000+
pounds at least. On the way home, it was a 15 mph trip for the 20 or so
miles from dunes to house. Many a time, there was a truck sitting
pathetically on the side of the road, squashed down to the axles, tires
riding on the top of the wheel wells, waiting to be offloaded and towed
home.

The point is that any trucker can tell you, you can do a lot of things with
a lot of equipment as long as nothing goes wrong. Stay at a slow speed,
don't severely overload, watch for bumps. yata yata. Lots of seriously
overloaded loads make it to their destination, but it is because of cautious
drivers rather than the equipment.

That said, what you asked is smart. Know what your rig will haul, and know
if yo are approaching the load limits. If you are, you will know to keep
the speed down, watch for bumps and curves, watch for sudden stops, all the
things that the professional drivers know by heart.

Knowing what the load capacity is can be calculated by simple math from a
truck stop weight and the door plate. Yes, you can do more than that, but
the options are sitting by on the side of the road, having to offload,
having to pay a hefty tow bill, and having to pay a hefty repair bill.

It's just so much easier to do the math ahead of time. I would carry a
maximum of 1500# in your pickup, but as slow speeds, and with good tires.

HTH

Steve

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