Which Ram 3500 should I buy?

Hi Everyone,

I have a cdl and need help finding a Ram 3500 which has the capacity to tow 6 vehicle trailer. I see some Ram 3500s have 3.73 or 4.10 rear axel ratio. Does this ratio matter or will both do the same job?

thank you

Looks like the max towing and payload is only found with 4x4, regular cab, long box, dually, 6.7 diesel, auto, 5th wheel package, with 4.10 gears.

Tell us more about the 6 car trailer and where you travel. 

Many of us here are looking to have cars moved. I have a car on the road right now traveling from Ohio to Illinois 

Why not go 5500?

The truck is 2012 Dodge Ram 3500 Laramie longhorn, 4d crew cab, 6.7 L, I6 Turbodiesel, 3.73 rear axle ratio, 4 wheel disc breaks.

l’m just starting the business with this truck, planning to drive coast to coast hauling cars

I can get you a nice deal on a Volvo with a head rack and stinger. Needs some cosmetics and tires, but mechanically sound and reliable.

My father retired and is selling it for a fraction of the cost of a new dodge. 

6 cars is a big trailer. I often wonder if a Meduim Duty, Class 6 truck is more the right answer here. 

Sample

Added bonus of being capable of DOT legal sleeper. 

Do you plan to modify the Ram to sleep? Will the sleeping be DOT compliant? 

In reply to No Time :

Sweet! 

In reply to No Time :

I was thinking to start with the small truck first to check if icar hauling is a good business, if I do well then I’ll buy the big truck with 9 cars trailer.

How much is your dad selling the Volvo?

In reply to Patrick :

Too big, I want to start with something smaller.

In reply to John Welsh :

He was based out of FL, and would run New England, Las Vegas, Salt lake city, or other areas depending on what was paying best. 

I’m biased, but I would go medium or heavy duty for a 6 car setup. Scaling a 6 car load with a single axle truck will require some creative loading and once you put a pickup or SUV on there it may quickly become a 5 or 4 car load to keep axle weights legal. 

Air brakes, air ride, and 14L of I-6 torques will make for a less stressful ride than pushing a 3500 to its limits, especially through mountains or in sloppy weather. 

As a man who has towed stuff with stuff, I wouldnt want to haul 6 cars with a light duty, and yeah, a Ram 3500 is light duty, pickup.  

If a contractor showed up with anything less than a Topkick or Kodiak or equivalent I would not have trusted them to get my rig from A to B safely.  3 cars seem to be the max I see on a Dually pickup.

In reply to Mocaxyz :

I’ll find out and let you know tomorrow. I believe it’s around $20k, but I need to confirm  

I’m not sure what kind of mileage a 3500 gets with a 5 or 6 car load, but I’m guessing it’s single digits, which isn’t far from something like the Volvo that Will average 7-8 mpg, even idling through the night for heat or A/C.

If you haven’t looked, I would suggest some research to figure out how many cars you need to break even. Once you know that you can compare revenue stream for starting small vs going bigger, and see if the added revenue offsets the cost. 

It probably would be worth seeing how much insurance varies among the different options, especially for cargo insurance. I think my father was paying over $10k/year for cargo  insurance, but I don’t know how that compares to a smaller truck/trailer combo. 

6 car trailer will murder that truck.  You need a small Kenworth or something.

I dont know if actually putting 6 cars on a trailer heavy enough to hold 6 cars behind a 3500 is a good idea. I don't know which 6 cars you're likely to find that's going to add up to less than 30k with the trailer, and if they averaged 4k lbs each it would be closer to 40,000lbs.  I think there is a new Ram 3500 rated over 30k but it's a single cab dually. 

Funnily enough, the first 6 car trailer i looked up has typical misleading stats. With the rating of its axles and its rated GVWR there would be basically no way to put 6 actual non-Fisher Price cars on it without overloading it. 

In reply to Mocaxyz :

He will go as low as $15k. It will need some tires and possibly batteries. It’s not perfect, but reliable and a low buy in to get yourself started.

Its currently in central MA, and he’s planning to be up here in a couple weeks. 

I can put you in touch with him if you want more info. 

I've seen one ton Dodges pulling those kinds of trailers, although I think they only had three or maybe four cars on them.

I put around 350,000 km on my 2008 3500, usually pulling almost exactly 14000 pounds. Six cars would be around 18000 plus the wagon itself. I would say that you can do it but it would be quite stressful, and you will spend a lot on tires and fuel. I got about 8 mpg towing, and I would say my truck was at the limit of what was comfortable. With over 20,000 behind you the tail will be constantly wagging the dog, you will pucker up on downhills and sweat and pray to see the top of long uphills. I eventually did a transmission, so put that in your budget as well. My feeling is that life would be ever so much easier with too much truck than not enough. A single axle topkick, FL70 or a T400 would be a better choice, and possibly cheaper .

No Time said:

In reply to Mocaxyz :

He will go as low as $15k. It will need some tires and possibly batteries. It’s not perfect, but reliable and a low buy in to get yourself started.

Its currently in central MA, and he’s planning to be up here in a couple weeks. 

I can put you in touch with him if you want more info. 

Wow, that’s a steal.

In reply to Mocaxyz :

Light duty trucks (like the 3500) carry a premium.  Used Heavier duty trucks are cheap. 

You will be working that 3500 hard, and pay a lot in depreciation. If you get a good deal on the heavier truck, you will be able to sell it for what you paid for it. 

You have what most of us covet- a CDL. There is no reason to start small. 

If you are serious about starting small, get a 3 car trailer. If you are serious about starting a business, get a real truck. 

I don’t mean to sound snide, but have you towed trailers before? I have, and now I want overkill for my tow rig. Nothing is more stressful than towing too much weight with too little truck. Accel ramps, brakes, wind management, etc. 6 cars on a one ton? Sounds miserable to me. 

glueguy said:

I don’t mean to sound snide, but have you towed trailers before? I have, and now I want overkill for my tow rig. Nothing is more stressful than towing too much weight with too little truck. Accel ramps, brakes, wind management, etc. 6 cars on a one ton? Sounds miserable to me. 

This. All of this. I know we joke that everyone needs a crew cab dually to tow their open trailer with a miata.... but once you've towed appropriately you'll never want to go back.

Just the basic math, 6 cars at 2000lbs (which isn't what most cars weigh) alone is 12k lbs, the max towing capacity of the SRW 3500 you're looking at is 17k. this one is 15k lbs EMPTY. So you could get a single car on it before reaching your capacity of the truck. At the least you'd have to have the Dually with 4.10's. Go with actual cars and not miatas and you're looking at 18-20k lbs in car weight plus the 15k in trailer and you're now way over that trucks capacity as well. 

So no... don't bother with a light duty truck to try and tow 35k lbs. It might pull it, but it will wear you and the truck out fast at best. At worst you end up in a pile of wreckage at the bottom of some mountain with peoples cars in a pile. That definitely isn't good for business.

Here's the towing specs for different 2012 Ram configurations:

 https://www.ramtrucks.com/en/towing_guide/.../RAM.2500.3500.Towing.Specs.pdf

To answer your question directly, it looks to me like the trucks with 4.10s get a higher trailer weight rating than trucks with 3.73s. But most of the crew cabs seem to be rated around 13-16k trailer weights, with a couple of the highest configurations hitting about 20k, which is obviously way, way below what 6 modern vehicles and a trailer are going to weigh.

A modern car or smallish CUV is 3500-4000lbs. A larger car or 3 row CUV is going to be 4200-4700lbs each. 6 modern vehicles could be anywhere from 20k-30k, plus the trailer at 15k lbs, plus some fuel in each vehicle (500lbs). There's no way you're legal to tow that much weight  with any pick up. If that's what you want to tow, I don't see any way to avoid stepping up to something bigger. If you want to start out with a pick up as your tow pig, then you'll need a smaller hauler and fewer vehicles, which might make the financial math different.

If you figure an average weight of 3500 lbs per car, that's 21,000 lbs of just the cargo.  A 6-car stacker itself probably weighs about 10k.  You are squarely in medium duty territory or better.  F800, Top Kick, something class 5 or 6.  A 1-ton is not even close to enough.

In reply to No Time :

Can you please give him my info mocauseg at gmail, thanks