How much would you tow with your 200?

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nwcoast

nwcoast

10 Year 15 Year
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I know I’ll get a lot of hate for it, but I’m wondering if anyone would tow a 12,000 pound excavator on a 2000-3000 pound double or triple axle trailer with their 200 series. I’m not talking about down the freeway or long drives.
I have multiple spots within 4 miles of my house that would be handy to have my excavator at. Top speed would be 35-40 mph.
I have a brake controller and airbags on my 200 and towed about 8500-9000 pounds of hardwood once up the coast and it wasn’t bad at all.
I know a one ton diesel would be the correct vehicle for the job, but if I’m just going down the road is it necessary?
Anybody else on here tow way above the tow rating of the 200? Any canucks or aussies wanna chime in with overloaded mining rigs?
 
nwcoast said:
I know I’ll get a lot of hate for it, but I’m wondering if anyone would tow a 12,000 pound excavator on a 2000-3000 pound double or triple axle trailer with their 200 series. I’m not talking about down the freeway or long drives.
I have multiple spots within 4 miles of my house that would be handy to have my excavator at. Top speed would be 35-40 mph.
I have a brake controller and airbags on my 200 and towed about 8500-9000 pounds of hardwood once up the coast and it wasn’t bad at all.
I know a one ton diesel would be the correct vehicle for the job, but if I’m just going down the road is it necessary?
Anybody else on here tow way above the tow rating of the 200? Any canucks or aussies wanna chime in with overloaded mining rigs?
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You want to tow 15,000 pounds, which is 50% over the tow rating of a Tundra, on public roads, with your 200 series land cruiser?
No.
 
Well, a Tundra did once tow a 292,000 lb space shuttle.

nwcoast, it's on you and your judgement. Only you know the route and risks. I've towed an overfull hydraulic dump trailer weighing over 10k once, on the fwy over some grades. Wasn't the brightest idea, but I kept the speeds down as low as possible and she did the job.

15k is extreme. Yet most of the load and braking is handled by the trailer right? Tongue weight might even be reasonable depending on how you're loading it. 4 miles 35-40mph... Hrmm, your judgement call.
 
If you get into an accident your insurance might not cover it. Sure the land cruiser can tow that weight a few miles but you open yourself up to legal liabilities. My uncle used to tow over 12k pounds with an old 90's chevy 1500 pickup with no trailer brakes out in the country in TX and it didn't bother him. I on the other hand wouldn't do it.
 
One nice thing about an excavator is you can really dial in tongue weight with the boom. So yeah I would think with decent trailer brakes and weight placement the trailer would be doing most of the work.
 
TonyP said:
In a closed, controlled environment, with a team from Toyota, at 5mph, for a couple hundred feet, yes.
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With enough gears you could tow the space shuttle with a washing machine. But in this context, towing and controlling safely on public roads are two very different issues.
 
When you barrel through a stoplight and plow into a SUV with kids, the question of whether you "can" tow 15k pounds it is irrelevant. Your safety isn't of concern here, your decisions have consequences. You should be willing to accept any personal risk involved in any decision. However, when your poor decisions effect others, that is another story. If I found out another driver plowed into my nonexistent wife/kids or coworkers and, essentially, murdered them, due to their own negligence, the insurance company would be the least of your concern.
 
Can you pull a train with your teeth? YES.

Is it WISE to pull a train with your teeth? NO. :hillbilly:

8A0A499C-43B3-4654-9F2D-B1274A792B85.jpeg
 
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TonyP said:
When you barrel through a stoplight and plow into a SUV with kids, the question of whether you "can" tow 15k pounds it is irrelevant. Your safety isn't of concern here, your decisions have consequences. You should be willing to accept any personal risk involved in any decision. However, when your poor decisions effect others, that is another story. If I found out another driver plowed into my nonexistent wife/kids or coworkers and, essentially, murdered them, due to their own negligence, the insurance company would be the least of your concern.
Click to expand...

To this why would that happen if the rig has a trailer brake controller and the trailers brakes are in good condition with the trailer being meant to handle that weight. So assuming the brakes are strong enough to handle that heavy of a trailer
Wouldn't it be irrelevant if your towing vehicle has brakes strong enough to stop 15k. Your rigs brakes would only need to slow down the 7k your truck weighs with the tongue weight while the 14k is on the trailer brakes to stop right?
 
Markuson said:
Can a man pull a train with his teeth? YES.
Is it WISE to pull trains with your teeth? NO. :hillbilly:

View attachment 2010791
Click to expand...

Ouch. That can't end well. I always tell my patients, "Teeth are not tools." This takes it to another level.

To the OP. Yes, I think you 'could' tow that setup if it is entirely on YOUR property, but if you even travel 10' on a public road then its an obvious 'NO'. Even if you plan to do it at 5am when traffic is light, all it takes is a drunk bartender who just got off of their graveyard shift to roll through a stop sign and at no fault of your own you T bone them. And while in a criminal sense you would probably be ok, the following civil suit would take you for all you are worth. Not worth it IMO. It sounds like you are not in a city center so you probably have plenty of neighbors or friends who could lend you a 1 ton pickup for a full tank of gas and case of beer.
 
It's a safety issue.
Why take unnecessary safety risks? Is it not worth $40 to rent a truck to not operate outside the safety ratings of your vehicle and potentially put other people at risk?
22,000 pounds (vehicle and trailer) at 40mph is 9M lbft of force. The fact others are trying to justify this is bizarre. Maybe I'm getting overly cautious in my old age.
 
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I'm not condoning anything here. There's risks involved. There's legalities. All great inputs to be considered by the OP.

I'm all for the safety argument. To be fair, we've got some ridiculously heavy built out rigs on this forum, thousands of pounds over GVWR capacity, riding on stilts with significant weights on their expedition racks, armored with barrel ram bumpers, speeding down the freeway. A dude towing overweight at 35-40 mph on secondary roads isn't the first threat that comes to my mind.
 
Good to have emphasis on brakes, but........what about hitch attachment points, emergency maneuvers, and safety buffers for electrical/mechanical failures. You can dial in tongue weight the the boom, but how do you know exactly what the tongue weight is? A normal tongue weight to prevent sway (which could be fatal with a 15,000 lb trailer on an LC even at 40 mph) is at least 10% of trailer weight. Are you going to load the LC hitch and suspension with 1500 lbs of trailer tongue? I'm the camp that on public roads this idea is an epic fail.
 
Let us know how it goes, or if you are being sued for everything you're worth lol
 
Physics tells us that 7,000 lb.s at 60 mph is way more dangerous than 15,000 lb.s at 30 mph. I can’t predict your environment but I’d pull it on a lot of the roads around here.
 
I wonder how tow ratings consider dealing with the rearward weight crush from behind you, should you hit a wall or other huge vehicle while towing.

With a super-heavy trailer, your truck’s crumple zones (made to handle front pressure or rear pressure but not both under massive trailer pressure) is suddenly also being crushed from behind the hitch as the trailer’s massive weight uses the entire truck as it’s crumple zone.

I wonder how much the potential crush from behind changes tow ratings...or if they even include such factors.

I don’t know. Just something I wonder about...because that trailer will be stopped by...something...in a solid object crash. If you are between the wall and the trailer...at some point, you are in the middle of an accordion.

I have never seen crash tests into walls with a 15,000 lb. trailer in tow...or really ANY trailer, for that matter...so I’m Uriah’s about this.

I would imagine that massive momentum might s at the ball off and send the tongue forward into the truck... I don’t know... Nust pondering.
??
 
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