how much weight have you had in a truck bed?

I have 3 soybean proboxes on the IH right now....it actually doesn't bounce over everything for a change.

I once put a 924 I'd cut up for scrap in my '88 Chevy 1/2-ton, and was still able to close the topper.

I once hauled a 7' slate pool table in that truck, then moved it again later on with a Dakota. The Dodge was visibly squatting, but I never noticed a difference in the Chevy, even though they were both rated as 1/2- ton.

Recently brought home 4,000 lbs of hardwood flooring in a rental truck (pretty sure rentals don't have a weight limit).

I've had a suzuki samurai in the back of my 89 chevy 6 lug 2wd pickup. On another occaision, fifty bales of hay. I am pretty sure both loads weighed about the same, around 2500lbs.

Seems every misty-eyed recollection of "Best Truck I Ever Had" starts with how much the truck was overloaded and still able to move under its own power. I guess that's why new trucks get bigger and stronger every year.

I've had 3 tons of gravel in my dually many times. Can't say it's been all that good for it, but it hasn't fallen apart either.

In reply to Danny Shields:

Its pretty much the same thing as taking a sports car out racing.....we all want to test its capabilities. FWIW, I think only Aussiemg's "Clifford" has a higher weight capacity on here than my IH. The proboxes weigh around 3k lbs each.

My dad's old K1500 W/T, this was his idea of "a load of wood", the 4.3/4L60E(fitted with HUGE cooler) would pull it surprisingly well down backroads at 40-45mph. Also once hauled a cubic yard of damp sand in it, filled with half yard bucket, first half it was kinda like the old commercials where they would drop a load in the truck and it would bounce, except it stayed down and rust fell off, second drop just made the tires squish down some. I drove that sand home, it was pushing the limits of the brakes at 35-40mph, but other than that it didn't seem to mind. This thing made it to something like 280k being abused like this monthly, and driven hard when unloaded, before it was just too worn out for DD use and sold.

EDIT: Forgot about the time he conned the guy at Lowes into loading damn near a whole pallet of concrete pavers in it. I think he drove it down the highway like that. He's crazy like that, safety conscious in the 1920s sense, e.g. unguarded belt is fine, just keep your hands out of it.

I had 5 yards of mulch in my 2500HD long bed. Depending on who you ask that was 4000 - 5000#. It didn't sag much. Pretty much just leveled it out.

Once loaded a pallet of Quickrete into my E350. 80 bags @ 80# = 6400#. It was on the bumpstops.

In reply to Kenny_McCormic: My Granddad had a 76 Dodge D150 2WD longbed with the Slant-Six and a 727 torqflite (special ordered this combo from the factory, my dad worked at the Dodge truck plant in Warren MI). It was set up a lot like your dad's truck, 2x4's stuck in the stake holes in the bed and all. Back in the mid 80's my cousin and I would use it to haul scrap 160 miles to Jacksonville FL for him (Prices were much higher in Jacksonville). One trip we had about 6K in scrap in the bed, gross weight at the scrap yard was almost 11,000 pounds. A wonder we didn't have a blowout on I-10 on the way there. Needless to say the trip there was at a leisurely pace, took us about 4 hours to get there, we were a rolling roadblock but this was the 80's so the speed limit was only 55 miles an hour. That truck lived a hard life, before the end it had a bed from a 69 on it because the original died from tinworm and falling tree limbs from cutting firewood. I'm not sure what happened to it after Granddad died but that engine/trans combo would not die.

About twice a year, I put a ton (50 bags) of pellet fuel in my Tacoma and drive it very carefully about 20 miles. I did add Timbrens to the rear which help a lot.

Last summer, I filled the six foot bed to the rails with carefully stacked bricks and moved them a few short miles. It was terrifying and I'll never do it again. The truck felt like it was going to roll over when it wasn't even moving.

I had a 1985 Nissan pickup. Put enough weight in it one night to pick the front wheels off the ground. Luckily we weren't going far, roughly a few hundred feet.

DILYSI Dave wrote: I had 5 yards of mulch in my 2500HD long bed. Depending on who you ask that was 4000 - 5000#. It didn't sag much. Pretty much just leveled it out. Once loaded a pallet of Quickrete into my E350. 80 bags @ 80# = 6400#. It was on the bumpstops.

You got ripped off, as you can't fit 5 yards of mulch in a pickup truck. Five yards also weighs about 2500 lbs, a little more if it's wet.

Of all the trucks I have owned (about 4), the only one that I regularly strained was my '91 Ranger. I bought it for $600 from the father of a guy I knew in my old Mustang club. He owned a contracting business or something.

Its funny because it was a 2.3L, 5spd, 2wd, longbed. Not the most capable or quick truck but it never complained. Here it is hauling some construction trash for a friend. I have no idea what it weighed but it sure made it squat haha.

I drove it though 3 Nebraska winters which was all about momentum and choosing your route carefully. Some weight helped too:

not quite a pick up truck....

but "loaded down" with 400#s

I had a Cummins ISB in the bed of my 85 El Camino for a week or so until I finally borrowed a cherry picker to get it out. 24/7 on the bumpstops.

I've been hauling a 425 gallon water tank about once a week every summer for about 5 years now for topping off the pool (well water around here is full of iron, awful stuff). It's about a 20 mile round trip to the fill station.

That's about 3500 pounds of water in a 2000 Ram 1500. The 4x4 Off Road's factory 2" lift helps. I keep saying someday I'll need a 3500 but it just keeps going. It's a beast.

I haven't had much at all in it, but the original owner of my truck ('02 Silverado 2500HD) used it to pull a gooseneck horse trailer, and I'm guessing that put quite a bit of weight in the bed. Enough that he installed helper air springs to go with the pop-up ball in the bed.

The truck laughs at my Miata on a 16' open trailer. :)

The most I have loaded in a truck myself was half a pallet of freezer pops, 1000#. Filled the bed of the Dakota nicely. Smoothest that truck has ever ridden.

Within a month of buying my civic I had it loaded 300+ pounds over it's weight limit with 5 adults plus some stuff in the trunk. Proceeded to do over 200 miles that day, a mix of 75mph on the mass pike and around town out on cape cod. The car was squatting and a little slow, but carried on.

i once had 4600 pounds of scrap iron in the back of my 87 GMC 3/4 ton pickup- the truck weighs 5300 empty with half a tank of gas and 240 pounds of me in it- rolled across the scale at 9900 at the yard..

i don't know the weight, but it was squatting lower and the load range "E" Transforce tires were "flatter" on the bottom when i had a pallet and a half of retaining wall blocks in the back one time. it was still a couple of inches from the bump stops.. the poor little worn out 307 was working a lot harder, too.

These are great stories! But you guys ever see the craziness in third-world counties?

Just Google Images "overloaded pickup"...

I watched a guy pull into the junkyard with an 15passenger ford E series van. He rolled across the scale at 18000lbs. He sorta moseyed over to the metal area and opened the back. The thing was cubed out with 10-12' I beams. Basically he was hauling 6-7 tons of steel in the back of a passenger van.

It's funny reading these stories about overloaded trucks. But when everybody asks what truck to tow with, you need a 1 Ton to tow a harbor freight trailer.

bravenrace wrote:

DILYSI Dave wrote: I had 5 yards of mulch in my 2500HD long bed. Depending on who you ask that was 4000 - 5000#. It didn't sag much. Pretty much just leveled it out. Once loaded a pallet of Quickrete into my E350. 80 bags @ 80# = 6400#. It was on the bumpstops.

You got ripped off, as you can't fit 5 yards of mulch in a pickup truck. Five yards also weighs about 2500 lbs, a little more if it's wet.

3 x 3 x 3 = 27 cubic feet in a yard.
8 x 5 x 3 = 120 cubic feet in a truck bed.
120 / 27 = 4.4 cubic yards.

As it was heaping, 5 seems reasonable. Also possible that the dude's bobcat had a not quite a full yard scoop on it. :shrug:

Woody wrote: Last summer, I filled the six foot bed to the rails with carefully stacked bricks and moved them a few short miles. It was terrifying and I'll never do it again. The truck felt like it was going to roll over when it wasn't even moving.

That was the van with the 3 tons of concrete in it. It was not a pleasant drive in any way.