I didn’t have to look at the reverse bow on the rear springs of this Isuzu to know ti was way overloaded. This moist soil mix is not light, and he’s got quite a few yards of it there, about twice what a truck like that and that bed are rated for. That dump bed lift is going to have a workout. I once got stopped by the Weight Police (yes, there is such a thing) in a rental truck, with a similar low-side dump body, for carrying more gravel than I should have, pushing the GVWR on the truck above its obvious rating. I talked my way out of a ticket and into a warning, because I told him it was a rental truck, and there was nothing posted on it as to its maximum gross weight.
Of course, I’m not pointing fingers, since I do this with my old Ford truck all the time.
Here’s the springs on that Isuzu. The main springs are bowed up, and overloader springs are pretty well flattened out.
Here’s my version, a load of moist, fresh sod. That was heavier than I expected, and the fork lift driver could not push the pallet any further into the bed, the friction from the rusty bed being too great. Not ideal.
Here’s my poor little 1200 lb rated springs, utterly useless now, as the axle is sitting firmly on the rubber stops. Rubber was used for the original Mini’s springs, but these are a bit firmer. It makes for a pretty stiff ride. Never mind the way the poor truck feels at speed (no more than 45): on second thought, never mind indeed. It’s not really appropriate…let’s just say that the I keep my distance from anyone ahead of me, and hope my tires hold up. Actually, I replaced these obviously rotted ones shortly after this picture was taken. When I took this shot, it made me realize how bad they were.
Of course one knows it’s overloaded when the rear bumper practically drags on the ground. But what’s always bugged me is how one is supposed to estimate, let alone measure, the tare weight when carrying bulk materials like fill dirt.
Well there are knowns when it comes to the density of materials that you can use to calculate the aproximate amount of the load if you are buying by the cubic yard. The guy running the machine is usually pretty good at knowing how much they are putting in the truck. However most places around here now sell by the ton so you know just how much you have from your receipt as well as knowing the total weight of the vehicle and load.
Therin lies the rub ;
Many (? most ?) Americans simply load their old pickups until no more fits in the bed then drive slowly as it sways dangerously…..
This is how I was taught , I well remember my poor old 1980 Dodge sortie 1/2 tonner groaning to carry cement and pea gravel to my house when first I bought it…..
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-Nate
I’m a subscriber to the webzine Trucker’s News, and they often feature videos of the consequences of overloading a truck. This week a video of a truck that flips on an interstate is featured. The truck may have been overloaded on a regular basis because in the video’s commentary it is theorized that an axle broke loose causing the trailer to flip when the load shifted. The rearmost axle is seen rolling down the road at the end of the video.
A few weeks ago, another truck twisted a bridge out of shape when the truck tried to cross a bridge that was not strong enough for the load. The driver claimed SHE didn’t know how to figure the weight of the load. The load was bottled water.
There was a tractor trailer that flipped over on the Tappan Zee Bridge near Nyack NY within the past week….with rear axle seen rolling down the road at end of video….might be same accident you are referring to….
Wow, and the Tappen Zee is already a piece of junk as is
As for the 18 wheeler that took out the wrought-iron bridge in Paoli IN there was absolutely no excuse for that one. There’s a truck stop that has a scale within a few miles of wherever you may be in the midwest and considering the fine is usually a $1.00/lb it isn’t worth it to not know you’re legal.
Interestingly the bridge may have survived the weight but the rig was also too tall for the bridge at the common 18 wheeler height of 13 foot 6 inches by about a foot, which she also claims she “didn’t know”. So between the weight and the destruction of the top supports, it collapsed. The bridge had weight restriction signs, height restriction signs, and No Trucks signs. All of which were ignored.
Case in point:
(In my defense, I was only traveling a mile or so on a rural farm road.)
If it was only a mile why not make two trips? I hope you didn’t unload by hand, that looks heavy 🙂
Same principle applies here as with groceries: If you’re a man, you’re obligated to get it all in one trip.
I actually made four trips loaded like that! A neighbor (mile down the road – we’re way out past the End Of The World) put in a geothermal system and gave me his woodpile.
When we re-roofed the house, I made eight or nine runs to the landfill with tearoff shingles, and scaled out at well over a ton on almost every load.
And it also would not be uncommon to have a ton of hay on the bed with another three tons on the hay rack – I’d typically make the trip to the sale barn at 25mph, since the rack would start gyrating at anything faster. That meant over an hour, some of it on State highways, and All With Drum Brakes!
“I’d typically make the trip to the sale barn at 25mph, since the rack would start gyrating at anything faster.
We have exactly the same situation most Saturday mornings. The “fast racks” can go 30 before they start to trail oddly.
My Dad had a 1965 F100 shortbed stepside with the 240 and 4 speed with granny gear….He took it to a local spring shop and had the rear springs rebuilt and a leaf or two added……
The accident referenced above happened last week on the Tappan Zee bridge that crosses the Hudson River not far from where I live.
http://jalopnik.com/when-this-trucks-suspension-breaks-loose-so-does-all-he-1776944261
Broken suspension mentioned in the article, but overload (then or earlier) probably involved.
Gnarly video indeed and glad no one was seriously hurt. I cannot tell if the vehicle filming was rear ended or hit by the rolling axle. I would be reluctant to pull over and damage a tire on that debris and would hope that all the debris is cleared away.
Overloading also affects steering…..Front end is lifted up and not as much weight sitting on the front tires.
What ?
A common excuse after crashing an overloaded truck is,” I blew a tire.” The truth is that they were so over loaded that they rolled the tire off of the rim causing a crash. If the cops put that Isuzu on the scales, that guy would pay more in fines than he’d make in a week. It’s just not worth it.
Our L700 grain truck has a single axle under an 18′ box. A truck of that GVWR should have no more than a 14′ box, or a truck with a box that size should have a higher GVWR, but this was 1970something and Grandpa got a good deal on it. So every time we completely load it up with anything besides a build-your-own steel bin kit (like we did once back in the day), it’s overweight. At least it’s only two miles into town.
I know that I have regularly overloaded my 2007 Honda Fit, which is rated for a maximum load of 850 lbs. I have driven with 5 people who undoubtedly have averaged 200 pounds, so that alone would do it. But even then there was still spring travel. I suspect that the published weight limit has been lawyered down for a margin of error.
Those leaf spring pictures bring back memories of my Mopar days. Those cars had such long rear leaf springs that a slight reverse curve on the back half was not unusual even when the car was unloaded, at least after a few years of use.
Diligent engineers & finance types (worried about warranty claim costs) also would favor conservative load ratings. Engineers drive execs crazy when they equivocate over yes-or-no technical questions; that’s where “Shoot the Engineers” comes from.
The Fit/Jazz was probably designed with lighter weight, more “fit” Japanese & Europeans in mind☺.
” a slight reverse curve on the back half was not unusual even when the car was unloaded, at least after a few years of use.”
My Family’s ’69 Chrysler Town and Country was like this. I could never understand how they were supposed to work, being concave all the time.
I used to run a 3/4 6.2 Suburban out of Manhattan to pick up landscaping supplies on LI or Jersey. Tinted rear windows, it was often loaded to the ceiling with bags of soil or sod and sometimes with the top of a big tree or some bamboo sweeping across the dashboard; if a B&B bundle would fit in the back I’d take it. (Had a 3-footer one time, that was fun hand-carrying through a sacred brownstone to the back yard.) Often there was just enough room left inside for me after I was done picking up. Sometimes I’d have to duck under branches to get in.
Last stop was at a gas station and level it out with the air-shocks so I could run back on the parkways. Wafted right past the vigilant eyes without a blink.
As an aside, I started the maint. schedule on that vehicle close to 30 years ago. They continued to follow it and it’s still in service today, with ~500k city hauling miles on it. Once we ditched the TH-400’s we kept trashing for a 350 it held up.
That Isuzu is overloaded, but not in the way you think. The front axle, not the rear is in trouble.
This truck is a long wheelbase version, where the rear axle is placed at the very back. This gives a smoother ride but transmits much of the cargo weight to the front axle. Such a setup is intended for light, fragile, bulky loads, like furniture.
For some reason this chassis got a dump box which is entirely inappropriate. That rear avle should be moved forward for proper load distribution. Indeed such a forward axle location is very common on these trucks.
My Isuzu NPR shows the rear axle has twice the load rating of the front. In this case, I guess the rear axle is fine, its the front thats horribly overloaded.
This truck is completely overloaded front and back. All 6 tires are squatting hard and the rear leaf Springs are bent backwards. There is just more weight than this truck can handle.
I’d say that both axles are significantly overloaded but the front is in worse shape due to the inappropriate use of a long wheelbase chassis for this vocation.
A neighbor of ours owned a 79 F350 long wheelbase dump set up pretty much the same as the Isuzu with the rear axle set way back….He used it for his landscaping business, to transport his mowers and equipment to job sites……and he occasionally used it to haul dirt and stone.
One time, we borrowed it to get a load of fill for our yard and when we got it home, the bed would not lift….The load was too heavy for the hydraulic lift….We had to shovel out enough of the load until the,lift could handle it…….The lift capacity was set up for a shorter wheelbase dumpbody so if you filled up all the available space on the long wheelbase dumpbody, it was too much weight for the hydraulics….The owner said that he could only partially fill the bed,with dirt and whatnot because of this.
Those cast iron 9″ Ford axle shafts will snap off right at the wheel flange…seen quite a few of them beside the road, sitting on the brake backing plate, back in the day
In my old rear (heavy duty) coil spring 70 C10, I did have wider than front rims and oversize tires to help with overloading, along with a second set of smaller overload coil springs mounted on the axle housing attached with u bolts, the other end resting on the frame.
The overloads would collapse completely just before the rubber stop when extremely overloaded, they held the rear up but lost all the rear suspension travel. Having the wide, tall tires helped smooth the ride a little, but bigger bumps were still really harsh without travel. Before I got the overloads the headlamps were pointed up towards the sky with too much weight, the axle resting and collapsing the rubber stops.
Luckily for me I never got pulled over or had a suspension or tire failure, but once when my electric trailer brakes failed the trucks drum brakes, going down the Siskiyou mountain pass, faded to smokey uselessness.
I grossly overloaded a Ford Ranger with gravel once…that thing wallowed around like a drunken elephant, thankfully it was only 2 miles home and I never exceeded 35MPH.
My old Volvo wagon seems to carry heavier loads than I would have expected, without squatting down very much, but the steering sure feels weird when it’s overloaded. It wants to oversteer too, which can be a little disconcerting.
You want a spooky ride, take a 1983 Buick LeSabre 42 inch stretch funeral home limousine with coil springs and no load leveling, add 9 adults, and try to drive that thing on I-270 in St. Louis…nose-high attitude, floating around, horrible directional stability, trying to keep up with the rest of the procession that’s only going 55MPH. The Cadillacs with load leveling were much easier to control at highway speeds.
As OntarioMike pointed out, that Isuzu is not only overloaded but it has too long a wheelbase for that kind of bed. Even if the truck is under total gross vehicle weight (GVW), it is very easy to overload the front axle the way that truck is configured. Moving the rear axle forward subtracts weight from the front axle. It gets a little tricky with dump beds, too much rear overhang can result in an impromptu wheelie when dumping.
That having been said, the Isuzu N series is renowned the world over for it’s ability to withstand abuse.
That chassis is WAY too light for the dump bed it has to carry. It needs 2 or 3 extra axles, included a very short rear overhang. Then you get a nice and capable mini dump truck.
The tyres look a little underinflated but thats all, those rear springs are designed to work like that, both sets together with a full load, The loader would know how much to put on as any modern loader is fitted with scales, or put the truck over a weigh bridge before leaving the loading site thats what we do before leaving the port loaded weigh the truck and trailer and tip off any excess 44,500kg is absolute maximum for what I drive, around 14,000 kg would be max for that truck pictured.
This is not an actual dump body, but it is a flatbed dump. The sideboards and tailgate are home made out of wood. A truck like this was meant to be used by a lumberyard to carry building materials to a jobsite and then dumped.
As many here have said, the standard for loading things into a truck bed is to load the bed until something rubs, and then remove enough so it no longer does. Of course this is not safe but for short trips, on back roads, it seems acceptable enough. There is a big difference (at least in my mind) between driving a couple of miles at 25-30 MPH and taking a seriously overweight vehicle out on the Interstate. I can tell you that 2000 pounds of gravel in the bed of a ’72 El Camino seriously compromises its roadworthiness. We only had to drive a couple of miles that way but I was really happy when we got to my brother’s house.
There is also a difference between a guy making a mistake, and a business not using the right tool for the job and placing its employees and the public at risk on a regular basis, which appears to be the case here.
I went to college with a guy that hauled dirt in a late 80’s 300ZX. What’s that saying about necessity being the mother of all invention?
I’ll admit to having been there.. I crossed the scales at 8800lbs!
Though in my defense the truck weighed 4400, and the trailer was another 1000lbs.
3300lns of scrap on a half ton Silverado isn’t bad though.
I assume the main risks with this Isuzu is overtaxing the tires and brakes as well as the transmission. Certain vehicles like Priuses look overloaded with 5 people aboard which kind of funny
There is a circa 1993 Chevy Cavalier Wagon I see in Portland, OR that is always overloaded with pallets and I really want to get a picture some day. There are a few in the back and about 3-5 or so on the roof.
I overloaded my 17 year old 95 Voyager once with a 800 or so pound furnace and various scrap flattening the leaf springs. On the way to Teet’s & Son from Trumansburg I only felt comfortable driving her up hills at 25 since having her shift into third gear at 30 sounded too stressful especially for the curvy roads.
I wish I could find the photo of the pickup that someone backed up to an 18 Wheeler’s flatbed trailer, thinking they could make off with it’s load of rolled steel. Apparently, the thieves never stopped to consider why it was being transported on such a vehicle. It did roll nicely into the bed of the pickup, though.
Oops:
Other side:
Different truck:
hehehe.
I think I have all of you beat. My first truck was a 1980 F-150 long bed. 300 i-6 with a 3-speed manual (previous owner had installed in lieu of the 3-peed w/overdrive). Just a basic Ford truck. I started my landscaping biz with it in 1984. I believe the payload capacity was just under 1,600 pounds, and the GVWR was 5,800; the tare weight at the scales was somewhere in the low 4’s. However, in my business, I did a fair amount of trash hauling, green waste and construction debris, and got pretty good at knowing my limits. That truck would carry, I say safely, you may not, up to 2,700 pounds; that left just a little space between the bump-stop and the axle. I hauled dozens upon dozens of loads like that at highway speeds, albeit carefully. The trickery loads were when I would load even further, considering the dump was a 15-mile trip. Oh, and I only ran P235/75R15 tires; to prevent the fender wells from rubbing. Probably should have forked over for the LT rated tires, but hey, I was cheap. My greatest loads were two different loads, verified by the landfill scales, of 4,100 and another just under 4,300 pounds. I used sideboards with 2×2 stakes; one of those loads bent the right bedside out a few inches during the side-to-side rolling during transit. How it didn’t snap the stakes, I’ll never know. Those were some serious white-knuckle trips at 45 mph up I-95. Tires looked like they were going to pop! But I can say I made it, safely. Never nroke a leaf, never broke an axle. Did break the left front coil spring (near the bottom) somehow, but never fixed it. Did wear out a couple clutches, and tore off the tailpipe twice. That truck was tough, but nickel and dimed me to death. After 2 years of my working it, coupled with my 21 year old self’s after hours exploits, that truck was done! The only thing salvageable was the glass, the right door, and believe it or not, the entire drivetrain. Even the frame was bent from a rainy slide into a curb. They don’t say, “Built Ford Tough”, for nothing. Unfortunately, no pictures of the blue beast exist.
A 3-on-the-tree manual was standard equipment on F-100 and 150s (most were Custom RCLBs, of course) through 1986.
I come by it honestly. my old mans attitude with any vehicle, be it car or truck, was load it until you have everything or the back tires won’t turn….whichever comes first.
My personal best was moving 1200lbs of cement bags in the trunk of my 74 Monaco.
The back was so low I couldn’t even see the springs.( and really didn’t want too! )
Another risk with wet sticky loads is when they don’t slide out the back of a long end-dump as the dump bed tips to empty the load. The load stays at the front of the bed which is rising, and the high CG results in a tip over, or in some cases I’ve seen, the dump bed and ram can’t take the high off-center load, and twist further off-center, and BOOM! . I haven’t looked, but I suspect YouTube has a lot of these.
Started my AC business doing chimney sweeps as well. Sold firewood as part of that business. 81 Datsun King cab with overload springs and air shocks. Home made datsun pickup rear for a trailer. Truck and trailer would carry 3k lbs of oak firewood. Went fine. Steered and slowed/stopped not so fine. Same story with the 1 ton chev van and 16ft tandem trailer I used before I quit that. Too much work and too little pay meant we stopped offering that service after a couple years.
That was something I doubt that I would do again because of the areas (urban) that I needed to transport. I still use trailers but they are more hardy than my first and the loads are from the landscape companies that sell dirt and rocks. I don’t know if the 4runner is rated higher than the old datsun but, if not, it should be.
Sometimes I stop and give thanks that I survived some of the escapades of my youth.
Good lord, look at the tires on the Isuzu. Oh well, Dad used my F-100 to haul 2400 lbs of gravel…in one trip. Transmission quit not too long after.
A teacher when I was at school had a Holden 1-tonner (ie kind of car-based, but on a purpose-built full chassis) that nominally had a 2300 lb load capacity depending on what body you fitted to it. He would load so much sand on it that he had to hang buckets of sand from the front bumper to retain steering control!