Quote:
Originally Posted by sourdough
I know this is contrary to the thinking of many but it, in my mind, makes sense.
The going theory is that you need to have tires able to support the weight of the trailer minus the tongue/pin weight. I disagree with that. I go with the gvw. Why?
Sitting on flat ground the tires ARE only supporting the trailer less the tongue/pin, but in actual driving those numbers are all over the place. I don't recall driving on lots of perfectly level highways; particularly without humps, bumps, undulations etc. Heck, some of I20 in LA and MS will have your truck/trailer somersaulting if you're not careful. In that instance, when the tail of the truck is up in the air along with the front of the trailer, just about the entire weight of the trailer, plus momentum is pushing on those tires. If they are rated to carry less than the weight of the trailer you're just asking for a problem IMO. And this is happening constantly on the road, so, I just look at the gvw and give myself cushion from there. I'm sure some disagree but I am convinced that is the reason so many OEM tires decide to blow - they were undersized in the first place. JMO - YMMV
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I meant to clarify in the above post that I'm talking more about bumper pull trailers vs 5th wheels. 5th wheels, simply by their construction and method of connecting to the truck mitigate some of the extreme issues I alluded to. I do think it's better to have substantially more capability in the tires than the gvw no matter what but it's not as important with a 5th wheel IMO - if that makes sense.