this is the most i have towed and the trailer empty is pretty damn heavy!!!

 

since 1999 my truck has been towing a double D 4horse trailer. the trailer itself weighed 4000 ibs plus 2 1800 pound quarter horses and all the equipment i'd say around 8000 pounds every weekend. It's a 1500 360 and it's now got 217,000 miles on it and still pulls strong

 

JP, I agree with you to a point, i.e., I don't care what people do on their private property or even some FM road out in the boonies. However, when you knowingly take a seriously overloaded rig out on the public highways and put my wife and kids in danger with it, that's where i draw the line.

OP, sounds like you really learned from the experience and I hope everyone reading this realizes we are talking about the black & white laws of physics, not testosterone, luck, intestinal fortitude, or any other nonsense.

 

^^x2
I completely agree with you Rex, even one time is too many. I rather have double the rating needed than be within 2k of the max rating when it comes to towing.

 

The heaviest thing I have towed with my truck would have been a 21 foot long trailer fully loaded with sand.
Some friends of mine was going to setup a 27 ft above ground pool one weekend, and asked if I could haul the sand over to them.
I go over there to help and see this big trailer sitting there just waiting for me to hook up to it. I was thinking at the time that maybe they were just having a couple of tons put on it. No big deal right? I hook on and take off with my friend to the quarry. We get there, and my idiot friend says just load her up as full as she'll go. At this point I knew we were in trouble. We pull around to the sand pile here comes this big *** loader around the corner. He dumps not one not two, but three full buckets of sand on this little trailer. The *** end of my truck was so squatted down it wasn't even funny.
The trailer all together weighed just over 12000. Now, for those of you that are going to chime in about how dangerous that was and stupid I was, you should know that we were only about 2 miles from the guy's home and it was all back roads.
We pay and take off. I was really amazed that the truck didn't struggle a whole lot with all that weight back there. I got about a mile and a half down the road when the trailer started to hop. We were going about 30. Before I could even think about shutting it down I see this tire, wheel, and a chunk of an axle pass me! When I finally got it shut down we got out and it had snapped about 1 foot of the axle off from the wheel. The whole assembly was laying out in the middle of a field. It took about three hours to get her home, since we had my father go and bring the bobcat out to lift the *** end of the trailer off of the ground so we could limp home.
It wasnt the smartest thing I have ever done, and I am glad that nobody got hurt during it. I do know it was a major learning expierence. BTW I was 16 at the time so I was a little dumber than I am now.

 

I too towed too much... but it was 20,000lbs of sailboat.. and nobody ever beleives me on this forum. I had electric brake and 5th wheel though... I never knew 1500s were so weak....

 

360dodgeram360: I have to apologize for coming onto ya so harshly. I thought you were telling your story kind of as a bragging right, saying "haha, look what I did". I didn't know you were telling it as a "I was stupid when I was young, can't believe I got away with it" story. We all have those, and I'm sorry.

To Gotta_feed_them_horses, the 1500s aren't that weak. You're just asking for a whole h*ll of a lot! Haha.