I've run mine with a pallet of concrete mix, 3600 lbs. Rode nice. Still had about 1/2" of travel before the bumpstops. Wallowed more than usual in the turns and you could really feel the weight when the time came to stop. I'd do it again with no hesitation.

 

Well I just dug up the scanned images of a 1993 Ram brocure. It stated that the 1993 version of my truck had a payload of 4,565 pounds. So when I put my 220lbs of human load and a tank of fuel worth of weight, I would say that I'm right at the max.... realistically i'd probally be over by a bit. Plus my father may end up coming along too, so thats about another 190 lbs.
But with this in mind, and everyone saying to run it, i'm going to go pick up the load tomorrow afternoon. I'll let everyone know how it does.

Mike

 

Bluedeviltorque,

It is an everyday sight around my area to see 1-ton trucks that are equipped with 12- or 14-foot wooden livestock beds and hauling eight or ten cows weighing around a thousand pounds apiece, usually with some sixteen-year-old kid at the wheel.

The guys that own the local stockyard have probably ten such trucks.

You should be fine with your load and half as much again.

 

I don't see any concern with the truck and the "aging" factor either... The truck looks to be in great shape with low miles. I have a 1972 Dodge truck that has been loaded above the cab with firewood many many many times as well and I wouldn't hesitate to carry your load in that one either.

 

Well I ran the load. 4000lbs of wood pellets on two pallets. After it was loaded up I looked and saw that I had approx. 2" between the bumpstops and the axle. It carried it as it had on previous trips, only for a much longer distance this time.

The braking was fine and as good as expected for what its equiped with. Having an auto tranny made for some slow starts, but that was ok (see explination below).

My biggest gripe about any pickup is the inability to truly secure a load in the bed of the truck. The stake pockets on these trucks are useless. There is not product that I know of that goes into the stake pocket and is heavy duty enough to secure any loads these trucks can carry. Its easy enough to keep a pallet from sliding by lightly wedging in boards on the floor between the pallet and the edge of the bed, but there is no good way to put straps over the top of the load and secure it to the floor of the bed. The pallets really need to be secured over the top as well because the 50, 40lb bags of pellets are just stacked on the pallet, a large bag put on to protect them from water and then wrapped in plastic. This allows the load to move off the pallet, which isn't fun. I can speak of this from experience after having the pallet slide backwards in my old truck while going up a hill. Thankfull the plastic was able to keep the bags of pellets from falling out of the bed, but I had to open up the pallet and stack the bags in the bed because they had shifted so badly. And my tailgate was forever slightly bent outwards from having 2000lbs slide into it.

In terms of trucks and their tiedown ponts, the 1st gens are the worst. There is noting... your on your own... good luck!

The second gen trucks had the right idea of the in-bed tiedows, but they were too small to get anything more than a rope into. Secondly the tiedowns at the tailgate end of the bed were weak and only bolted through thin sheet metal.

The third gen trucks were half a step forward but one half step back as well in their design. The design allowed for the use of one, possibly two of the light duty 1" straps to be hooked to the tie downs, which was good. But some bean counting lame excuse of an engineer(not all engineers are bad by any means!) decided to make the tie downs out of some kind of plastic. Though this plastic has proved to be very strong, I don't know how it would do if even a small shock load (aka emergency stop resulting in a load sliding) were applied to them. I also have a concern that they would become brittle with age, especially in high heat/lots of sun regions.

As for the 4th gen trucks I can't say because I haven't looked at them in that respect yet. Hopefully they are at least as useful at the 3rd gen.

To turn a long gripe back into a positive praise of the good ol' 1st gen's the truck performed wonderfully. The ride was smooth and reminded me of a fully loaded tri-axel dump truck, having a little sway and just enough feedback through the controls to remind you that you're loaded and to not drive like a nut. If I had a good lightweight steel or a strong aluminum flatbed with plenty of tiedown points so the pallets can be secured and throw in a set of timbrens to just level the truck off a little I would have no hesitation to drive the truck anywhere for any distance.

Mike

 

Glad to hear everything went well.

 

You can bolt some strips of that slotted tie-down track stuff in your bed, one each side on the floor, one each side along the bed-rails, a couple crossways front and rear, and get a bunch of the ratchet-straps that are made to lock into the track.


I got a bunch of the straps at a swap-meet and am waiting to find some lengths of the slotted rail at swap-meet price.



Or, you can bolt in stainless tie-down rings, or plain old eye-bolts.

Once you drill the first hole, the rest are easy.

 

One thing we all should do in the salty north country is to take a good look at the frame for deep rust. Not just heavy surface rust, but thinning.
My 90 had rusted to the point that a hole had started. It was a tiny hole, hard to spot, but also very thin around the hole. The area just ahead of the left rear spring.
Ray

 

Id do it i would just watch how you drive. I had 4000lbs of salt in the bed of my truck last year. I was at a stop light on a 9% grade hill and when I took out I didnt think I gave it that much throttle until the turbo lit up and the far back pallet hit the tailgate.

Even tho it didn't hit it that hard and I didn't take out that hard 4000lbs of salt slamming into my tailgate ripped my tailgate off and dumped one pallet on the road. None of the bags broke thank god but it was an expensive trip to the body shop and a very embarrassing moment on a busy road. Could have been worse if someone was behind me