To answer your original question - Can a 1500 carry a ton of cargo??.... NO! You will be officially over loaded.

You may be able to cram it in the bed but, your truck is not rated for it. Don’t get into an accident. Your insurance company will leave you cold.

Remember you still need to be able to stop that load and steer the vehicle.

 

Rearend bearings take a hit as well as the under rated tired. You need at least a load range C or D for that kind of weight.

 

dodge really under rates these trucks as far as work capability.

 

im glad im not the only one thats done that ha. i loaded the exact same thing actually...1 ton of wood pellets for a friend. i was scared when they loaded it up but it was fine

 

The airbags are an expensive option for just hauling an occasional load. Try a set of helper springs or overload springs as the will help carry the extra weight. As long as you are taking your time and don't hit any big bumps, it should handle the load fairly well. My $.02

 

When I receive my pallets, I'll take a before, at 2000lbs and at 2800lbs pictures. The 00 ram sport still had bounce left before it touched the rebound rubbers. It also had 285/70 16 to help carry the load.

 

Do you really think $175 is an expensive option? Really? I don't. I've done the helpers in the past, and don't like the ride with an empty bed. I prefer the complete adjustability of air bags, aired down to 5 lbs. you don't know they are there.
I've done two loads of river rock in my truck (about 2300 lbs. each) and the bags leveled the truck with about 65 lbs. of a air in them, capacity of the bags is 100#, so you can see, as far as load leveling goes, there was room to spare. Although you really need to take into consideration other components and braking issues. But I only needed to go about 8 miles each time and took it real easy. Beat paying the delivery fee which would have been almost as much as buying the stones.

 

If you knew in advance that you were over loading your truck
and then there had been an accident where someone got hurt,
you would have first attended a criminal trial where you would have been found guilty,
then there would have been a 2nd 'civil' trial where the hurt person would win a huge money settlement easily,
then there would have been a 3rd civil trial where your insurance company would have sued you for violating your insurance policy 'willfully' and asked for everything you owned, plus more

But I will admit that back in the 1980s I worked at a coal company where in the fall of the year pickup after pickup rolled up to our scales, got light weighed, then got loaded with over 2000 lbs of stoker coal, and then drove away in this unsafe condition, many of them so loaded down that they were resting on the spring stops with the front of the pickup many inches 'nose high'. I was the Superintendent and it was my legal responsibility to stop dangerous things like that, and I never considered it carefully. No one ever got hurt as far as I know, so I was just lucky, despite being unwise.

The other day I read an article in the newspaper about a Captain in the US Army who set up his headquarters and his men's sleeping quarters in an abandoned house in Iraq that turned out to be filled with multiple hidden bombs in every room. Luckily one of his men later saw some exposed copper wires in a field outside and they were able to get out and have the engineers come in and defuse everything. All were shocked at the size and numbers of the hidden bombs.

The Army Captain muttered to the newspaper reporter afterward:

"It is better to be Lucky than Smart."

 

I totally agree. My run is about 1.5 miles with this load and I know I can still have an accident in that short distance, it's a calculated risk that I do once a year, and I drive REALLY slow. Don't want to snap a spring.

 

Not entirely sure how much weight there was here, but I'm willing to guess that I'm close to a ton.

Who else can go to a bar, eat for free, drink for free, and leave with a full load of wood...for free...oh wait me! (Did I mention that the bar is owned by my Mother-in-Law?) Oh and don't worry, I only had 2 beers and it was several hours before I drove my most likely overloaded truck 40 miles back home. (BTW hand calculated mileage was 17.4 round trip I've never gotten that good.)