What was the worst trailer you ever pulled????

[Jff24Gordn]

What was the worst trailer you ever pulled. Did it like to rock from side to side, front to back, trail crooked, swerve from side to side? Might as well have a crazy post on the new fourm.

The worst I've ever pulled was a 2 axle car trailer. It was raited for 7k, and had car tires on it. I put a `70s chevy c30 10' with a home made flat bed very well built on it. The drivers side lower A arm had busted out of the bushings. At one time it was owned by a local conrete company, and had about 2" of concrete on the undercarrage. It also had a 200 gallon diesel tank in the bed with 100 gallons in it. It also had a bunch of junk in the bed. I think it was supposed to weigh 11k by its self.
So on it went, it wad hard getting it on due to the front end being broke. But we got it on, and got it tied down good enough that it wouldnt roll off. So we got out on the interstate with it, and it bacame apparent that it had way TOO much play in the suspension. It started rocking sideways, and pushing the rear of my truck around. It got rocking so bad that I was able to see the turn signal above my tailgate, when sitting steady, I was only able to see half of the headlight. That makes about 8 inches that it was rockin from level. It only startd doing this 3 times on the drive home. And the trailer didnt have lights, and it was after dark. Fortunatly, no cop noticed that their wasn't any lights. That was one long drive. Also, when we went to put it on the trailer, it picked my back wheels off of the ground and pushed my truck. The trailer did have a slight curve to the bed when we were done.

So has anybody done worse?

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1996 2500, 4x4, 5 speed
-- email address removed -- Great Lakes TDR
PURDUE STUDENT 
GO BOILERS

 

[Joe G.]

I dunno if I've done worse or not, but we had a hard time with a trailer once in the early '60s. My wife's Uncle Bob lives on a ranch near Grass Valley, CA. He got a real buy on some large timbers from a guy tearing down a barn and enlisted me to help him. Some of the 12 X 12 timbers were so long that even with the tail gate down and one end against the cab of the old '54 Dodge half ton Bob had, the other end would almost drag the ground behind the 15' single axle farm trailer he had. It had the kind of hitch where you just drop a pin thru the end of the tongue. We had to go about seven miles on SR49 from the dirt road to the other guy's ranch until we could turn off on a back road to get to Bob's place. We would hit a bump and the whole mess would start to wig wag like crazy. Some of the cars we met pulled clear off the road until we got by. It took about ten trips to get all the timbers hauled. We were a nervous wreak by the time that was over. If a cop had seen us he would have had a fit.

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Joe George
Eureka, CA

'95 2500 CC auto 4X4,3. 54,Combo EGT/boost guage,custom switch panel,PacBrake,TST #5,BD valve body,Automatic motorhome steps on both sides,Foldacover hard bed cover,Cummins chrome kit,Black steel grill guard,Front hitch receiver

 

[BCFAST]

I recall pulling a borrowed 2-axle open car trailer with my Chevy p/u. A semi got things started... the trailer had no brakes and I did my best to get straight, but the swing got stronger and stronger (is it bad when you can see the car number on the door in each of your door mirrors?) The folks on the Interstate behind me all saw what was happening and backed off... well, I did get it shut down with no damage, but boy I had the shakes for a good 10 minutes!

 

[WCrovo]

A 2000 24foot Weekend Warrior. What a piece of junk. Severel blowouts, heater and micro that were weak. Frame problems. Gained 2mpgs with new 28 foot Tahoe Transport that weighed 2,000lbs. more. Factory was not helpful, probably to embarresed. Weekend Warriors are NFG!!!

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2001 2500 tow, camper, SWB, ETH, Bright white.

 

[Doc Tinker]

Why am I not surprised that the same guy who likes to drive down blind alleys at 60mph, would pile a junk pickup on a junk trailer and go somewhere with it?

Seems like he got stopped by a cop recently for driving 15 over with his friend(?) in the back of his truck, trying to hold onto a bunch of DJ stuff.

Was that 100 gallons of red fuel you were hauling, Jff24Gordn? If so, bring some to me and you'll be forgiven. #ad


<font color=#000080><strong>Doc</strong><br>Secretary: Great Lakes TDR <font color=black>B. A. D. Boys<br><font color=#990033><strong>Ram Fast - Dream Hard</strong>

 

[Doc Tinker]

Hey! Who turned off the HTML?

#ad


[This message has been edited by Doc Tinker (edited 12-13-2000). ]

 

[maint.man]

How about this, as a favor this week I moved a 30' inclosed trailer for the company I work for , it was tandem axel, weighed in at 20K and had only a hint of brakes. But best of all it's load was installed by a doctor, and of course it was all on the nose. The guys I work with are delusional, or Ford guys , and had to ask if they needed to pull me around and I laughed , then told them if they were in front of me that would only get them RAMMED!

 

[illflem]

Pulled a 14'x70' mobile home,with a tractor in reverse for 12 miles. Had the hitch ball mounted in a front end loader bucket so I could see-saw the trailer though dips. Took four guys giving me directions at every turn,all I could see was the front of the trailer. It took 5 hours to go 12 miles, fortunately all on back country and dirt roads.

Another time I bought three 14'x20'x 14' high picker cabins for my orchard,had to move them 18 miles. I hired a crazy old owner operator,Wide Load Willie with his '60 Mack truck and flatbed,for this one,no permits. When these cabins were loaded on the truck they were almost 20 feet high,Willie said,"Ain't no problem here,no grass is gonna grow under my feet". Willie gave me a board with a notch at the end and had me sit up on the peak of the roof as he drove and lift telephone lines up out of the way. After we broke the third set of lines Willie stopped and said,"Get the he11 up front,you ain't doin any good up there". He cleared the phone lines out of the way for the next two cabins with the first one. This was in the early '70s,you can't get away with that kind of stuff any more.
As for Wide Load Willie,he got his truck stuck with a 16 foot wide load on the main 15 foot wide bridge into town and lost his CDL over it. Traffic was backed up for miles.



[This message has been edited by illflem (edited 12-14-2000). ]

 

[Joe G.]

Bill,

That reminds me of what my father-in-law did once. He was a logger in El Dorado Co. , CA at the time. Retired now. The USFS had evicted some squatters from the El Dorado National Forest and were going to burn the cabins on the illegal mining claim they had. He talked the forest service guys (old friends of his) into letting him have the two cabins if he could get them off the property in a hurry. The way he did it was to cut a hole in the end of the cabin with his chain saw and back his International two ton flat bed inside. Then he jacked up the cabin until it just cleared the ground and braced it in place with some old timbers. This mess was wider than the back roads he used to get home. Didn't meet many cars but the ones he did meet had to pull up a side road to let him by. He made a black smith shop out of one cabin and the other became a nice little guest house.

 

[drawson]

Before my brother in law got his backhoe, he had rent one and the trailer it came with was sweakeed and towed side ways. I could only tow it up to 50 MPH and man it was strange looking into the right mirror.

 

[pcorssmit]

A few months after buying my Blazer (when it was still stock), it burned up all 8 glow plugs and left me stuck at Loveland ski area, which is on I70 right next to Eisenhower tunnel, on the continental divide. I got a ride home and rented a tow bar the next day. This was one of the cheezy rental clamp on type, not one with permanantly attached brackets. Towing it behind our Suburban, the road manners were bad enough that I was afraid to go over 45 mph. Never again.

One of my first towing experiences at age 16 was flat towing a buddy's CJ5 to Moab (from Denver) for the Easter Jeep Safari. The Jeep was lifted 2 1/2", and had 33's. The tow vehicle was a miserably underpowered '84 Chevy Caprice wagon. No tounge weight + ~18" drop tow bar = bad. Coming out of a tunnel on I70, hit old pavement, gravel on road, sharp turn. Almost ended up in the ditch. We were both white faced; this is now referred to as "the tunnel of death".

Incidentally, while flat towing the same Jeep a few years later, my friend had another close call. The Jeep had a bigger lift and tires at this point. He was towing it behind a '78 C20 SRW reg. cab that he was considering buying, as a power test. Long story short, he ended up stopped across 3 lanes on I70, with the truck 45 degrees to the road and the Jeep 90 degrees to the truck. He went home, threw away the tow bar, and bought a '77 C30 crew cab dually and a trailer. Geez I hate flat towing.

Pete

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'97 2500 CC 4X4 5spd Sport
'83 K5 Blazer 350 TBI (ex 6. 2), 39. 5 TSLs, 3" lift, Dana 60/GM 14 blt, Detroits

 

[Jff24Gordn]

Doc, I was only going 110 down that alley, not 60. You saw the pic of my truck, and the car.
And it wasnt a junk truck till it broke down. The trailer wasnt junk, just too small.
And I was going 50 over the speed limit, not 15. And they guy did fall out onto the cop car, and thats why he stopped me was to give him back.
The fuel was indeed red. It was for nonroad purposes. None of it ended up in my tank due to the tank on the truck that it was in was rusty, and didn't want that crap in my tank. I get my red fuel somewhere else. #ad


pcorssmit, You must have had a bad towbar, or realy bad allingment on the truck on it. I've pulled a POS `82 F150 about 50 miles at 65 mph, and had no problems with it swerving. I did have the right height with the bar due to a 6" drop hitch. I've used this bar on other trucks and it worked well on them also. It used 2 chains and a bumper to hold it on each side. One chain clamped onto the bumper top, and the other went in a hole in the frame. They were tightned up against a spring so it stayed tight. This held the bar to the bumper on the truck at the frame rails.

 

[Old Nordby]

Couple good ones.

My ex-roomate blew the motor up in my cheap transportation, a 1963 VW Bug. We pull the motor at home, realize it needs to go to town, so he hooks up with a tow bar and heads out. Doing 70mph down the interstate, he pulls over, and realizes he never took it out of gear. It was in 1st. The output shaft was about to fall onto the ground, and it the whole transmission was too hot to touch. He towed it to the crusher instead and got lunch and a case of beer for his trouble and my car... .

Threw a Farmall A in the back of a 16' Trav-a-Long all steel gooseneck, chained her down, and convinced a 1000lb quarter horse to load in the escape door in front of the tractor. Towed that rig 850 miles with a 1988 1/2 Drof with a 351M. Hit a head wind and was floored at 50mph in 2nd gear for 5 hours straight on I-80 getting < 6mpg. Sold the truck after that beating.

jon.

 

[DUNE RACER]

I had a truck of green logs off my property cut into usable lumber by a local sawer. At that time I was driving a 98 CTD, auto. , shortbed and had to rent a Uhaul car hauler to get the wood home.
I had no idea the wood was going to be as heavy as it was and we quickly realized that hand loading was not going to cut it. We had the guy running the place pick up one of the two slings with his cherry picker and set it on the trailer. The pile was 4'X4'X16' and wet as he!!, his crane was groaning bad when he picked it and I though the trailer was going to break in half when the full weight sunk in.
It was only about 6 miles to my house but I couldn't go over about 35, all back roads. That trailer swayed like crazy and bucked all over the place. I made a turn to go up this one hill and couldn't get up it in 2wd, had to use 4wd,on pavment! I dropped the trailer off after dark so they wouldn't notice the slight bow it now had (oops).


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2001 black dually,4x4, 6 speed H. O. ,loaded up and then some!

 

[danandamy]

#ad
LMAO
You guys are definitly trailer pullers after my own heart! Several years back, an old friend of my Dad's from California came to visit him. He was having a chuckle telling my Dad about how in California you can't pull a goosneck without having a commercial license and all this other nonsense. He says, "Then we get to Texas and it's a whole different world, 33 foot goosneck double decked with sheep, a 17 year old driving, no trailer brakes and doing 70!" #ad
#ad

 

[Don D]

I was pulling a grain train in the Palouse during the harvest in 1990. It was a short haul so the boss told us to really fill 'em up to make it pay. Avg. gross weight was 140,000+. Didn't end up paying too well when the front trailer broke in half in the middle of an intersection.

I also has a 1958 Hyster lowboy break in half under a D-8 cat at 35MPH.

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'93 W250, LE, CC, 4x4, 5spd. , Cummins, K&N, 16cm turbo, Power Wagon injectors, Professionaly rebuilt and calibrated pump, straight exhaust, Lund visor w/lights, 5th wheel, Gooseneck, H. D. rear hitch, Aluminum everything. My Rigs

 

[Briar Hopper]

In '96, I rented a Bobcat (complete with tandem axle trailer) to do a friend's driveway, and pulled it with a 94 Ford F150, straight six 300c. i. 4x4, 4 inch Superlift lift kit, and 33x12. 50 BFG Muds, the trailer didn't even make the back of the truck sag one inch ! It pulled pretty good, but took forever to get up to highway speed #ad
. Everything was fine until I loaded up, and backed up the trailer, getting ready to leave. The sloped tail part of the trailer rode up and over a tree stump that I didn't see, it was after dark...
I had to offload the &*%#@ Bobcat and use the bucket to lift the trailer end clear of the stump, then load it back up. I then pulled forward, and... the trailer end hit another stump !!! I got out to look. I'm tired, it's dark, sweat pouring off me... I got back in the Ford, backed up about 4 feet, then put it in drive and floored it. OOooohhhh, that was painful... I slid out, and looked again. The stump is out, there's a five foot hole in the ground, and the lip at the end of the trailer ramp has a slight bend in it. No other damage. I was almost too tired to pull it home!
BTW, my friend's aunt, in whose driveway it all happened, gave me $50 for removing the OTHER stump with the Bobcat. #ad
Didn't get paid for the second stump.
Now that I have a Cummins Ram, I'm sure it's a stump-puller, but I'm not interested in finding out, not THAT way... .

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Tom
GLTDR B. A. D. Boys
www.lubedealers.com/meers.html

[This message has been edited by Briar Hopper (edited 12-21-2000). ]

 

[sstockton]

Just gotta bring this thread up again, I'm new to the towing forum and just checking out some old stuff, but this all reminded me of a story with my buddy, luckily I wasn't driving. Anyways we were coming back from Hot august nights with his firebird on a tandum axle trailer, and I just have this slight inclination that it might be a bad thing when all the sudden the tounge snaps off the trailer and it starts to pass you going down the freeway. anyways, it started to drift back towards the truck then parted ways again, and went off the road and luckily nothing happened to the Car the Truck or anyone else, but that was a interesting towing experience.

 

[doppx006]

At my work we needed a office trailer quick from Indiana and I brought it up to Duluth Minnesota but the problem was it only was a single axle and it was a 30' unit, flat front and all. Bad pull bad pull I did it about 2 months ago with my current truck and holy crap did that thing have some toungue weight with only one axle.