To Dually or Not???

[motorjock]

I have recently purchased a larger horse trailer 4 horse w/8ft living quarters. I see plenty people pulling this and larger trailers with SRW but was wondering what some of you experts think about this. Basically, what would the advantages of having a dually be? I know if you had a blowout at 70mph it would be nice to have a 2nd tire, but are there any other worthwhile reasons.

Anxiously awaiting.....Thanks!

[mgraveman]

Yes, the ability to just back up to the trailer and take off. A dually with a goose or 5th wheel will be the end of trailer sway or worrying about tire inflation. I've overloaded my duallies quite a bit, and never gotten my tires hot, or much past warm. I'll never buy anything but a dually after driving both with a load, anything over about 5k lbs.

Case and point:

I went with a friend from kansas to Kentuckyto pick up an engine for a deuce and a half. I understood it weighed 3200 lbs with the container. So, I was safe to put it on my flatbed, or close to it anyway. We go get it, and the forklift picking it up nearly tips over. I'm thinking "that's odd, that should be able to do 6000 lbs." she puts it on the corner of the bed, and it sends that side of the truck all the way over so that the tire is touching the flatbed. Scooting it to the middle was OK, nothing near the blocks, but it felt HEAVY!!

We drive home (6 or 700 miles). Upon getting home, we unload it with a crane on a 2 ton service truck. The front wheels of that truck go up in the air, and we have to drive my truck out from underneath the load. A week later, he opens the container it's in, and it's half full of water, right up to the seam. We drove all that way probably 3 or 4k overloaded with no trouble, no hot tires (I always check this from the days when I drove a SRW). I didn't know it was overloaded though.

[SDB]

With the dually you will better control of your truck going down the road loaded. You won't have to use sway-bars if you choose not to. Also less wear on the tires. Because the weight is on four tires not two. Also the horses won't rock your truck as easy. I say this from owning a dairy farm all my life and moving cattle farm to farm. I will never go back to SRW.

[Wobblin-Goblin]

Go with the dually. As much as I like my '03 SRW, I want my next truck to have four rear tires.

I tow almost every day, usually 5,000lbs, but occasionally up to 10K+.

[RoperChick]

I would get the dually, as you can see from my signature line, we have two 1-ton trucks a SRW and a DRW. We bought the dually thinking we were going to get a 4-horse 8 or 10 ft short wall LQ trailer. We ended up not buying the trailer; I thought the dually would be more truck than we really needed for our 3-horse trailer, but it’s definitely not the case, the dually hauls the trailer much better.

When our 3-horse trailer is loaded with our team roping horses (they weigh about 1300 each) and lots of tack, feed, etc, it weighs between 9,000 & 10,000 pounds. Even with our trailer, which obviously isn't heavy like a LQ trailer, the difference in stability between the two trucks is really significant at highway speeds (70-75mph), when passing semi’s or especially in strong winds.

Don't get me wrong, the SRW truck hauls just fine, we used it a lot for hauling before we had the dually and were perfectly happy. But the dually is *much* more stable.

Hope this helps you with your decision.

[Riggodeaux]

Capability and compliance with weight capacity! I assume your new trailer is a gooseneck. I'd load and weigh it; I suspect, depending on the whether you have or are considering a new or older used truck, that a 4 horse/8ft LQ, loaded, is close to or will exceed the gross combined vehicle weight for even a newer SRW F350. While a heavy goose will 'ride' fine behind an SRW [w/o sway, etc. issues], I'm from the Smokey Wren school of obeying the weight max ratings. I know that my 4 horse, all aluminum, no-LQ 'simple' goose, loaded, with the truck 'wet' and loaded, takes me as close as I want to be to all the weight limits of my 2000 F250 2wd, and tests my 'stock' performance configuration. Its what is leading me to finally 'chip' and open the exhaust a little before next spring/summer's heavy horse hauling season. If anything, the newest F350 SRW, with the towing package, might be just enough truck to do the trick, depending on how heavy you travel - but you might want to err toward the dually for safety's sake [esp. if its not otherwise a daily driver].

[barrelhorses]

My 05 is SRW. I have many friends that haul with duallies and I have driven a lot of miles in their duallies (I always get stuck doing the 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. driving). At any rate, the duallies are far more stable feeling. However, my truck has to be a daily driver. Due to drive throughs and parking hassles, we decided that the SRW was our better choice this round.
As you can see in my sig., I pull a 2003 Sundowner 4H LQ. I usually have three quarter horses with me at all times plus all the feed and stuff. I have not made any really long trips with this rig (the longest so far is about 120 miles) but have not experienced any trouble yet. The only thing I would change at this point is the bed length. The 8' bed would have made alot of difference.

[Wayne B]

I was going to go the Dually route till I found these www.ricksontruck.com/wheels_ford_srw.html

Rickson makes a 19.5 inch rim that bolts on, No Adapters [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif[/img] Then you mount a 245/75R 19.5 Commercial Truck Tire that has an "H" Load Rating and a Weight Rating of 4,900 lbs each. You still have SRW with out the hassle of a dually.

I have done LOTS of research and this gives you the best of both SRW & DRW.

Now it's not cheap.
With Aluminum Wheels & 245/70R 19.5 Michelin XDE-MS tires, it's $3,650 w/ a Steel Wheel Spare,
and $4,000 w/ an Aluminum Wheel Spare, plus shipping. Aluminum Wheels are $470 each, Steels are $243 each and the tire are $304 each. You can save some money going all steel wheels and use a different tire.

Luckily Rickson is only 87 miles from my house so I am picking mine up when the time comes.

Wayne B

[Dualie]

In my personal opinion I will never own another trailer toter that isn't a dually.

IM not saying a SRW truck wouldn't work but, the dualie gives me that margin of safety while doing 80 Mph through the desert that a SRW truck could never do. while Towing a rear tire blowout on an SRW truck will be extremely hard for MOST people to maintain control of and ultimately wreck there truck. With a DRW you usually have to replace a fender but not the truck a the trailer.

I drive dualies every day. In the San Francisco bay area nonetheless. sometimes having a CC DRW is an asset as some of the little four wheelers get the heck out of your way. Never met a drive through I couldn't concur. Don't think twice about parking garages, parallel parking or tight lots. Now the parking garage in union square sometimes gets hairy there are several 3+ point turns on the way to the bottom level.

COUNTER POINT is, I have a friend that has an 03 4x4 ex cab SRW and wants a dualie. but I he rarely tows anything with his truck just his little sundowner 4 horse about 3 times a year less than 400 miles and he's very anal about tires any way if there less than 40% their junked. I keep telling him that if your not towing more than 35% of the time all a dually means is that you will spend $500 bucks more on tires when it comes time to buy new ones. Any big moves go on the 379 Pete and trail king beaver tail.


All of mine are 2x4 the 4x4 would just get me in trouble father out into the pasture then I really should have been and thus farther to recover truck from.

Just my semi coherent ramblings after a really long Monday.

[barrelhorses]

Did I mention that my wife typically drives the truck everyday? That might make a difference in your understanding for my explanation of why I chose a SRW over DRW. She only drives about 10 miles to work. I have to drive much further so I usually drive the more economical car.

Seriously, we do pull about every weekend. Typically we only pull 50 miles or less to get to the barrel races. However, once in a while we will take a longer trip. If we were going to travel greater distances more often, then I'd want the dually. However, the tire/wheel upgrades mentioned by someone earlier might be worth considering for my purposes.

[JasonZ]

Maybe a little food for thought will sway you. I tow a 53' Haulmark Enclosed trailer with my truck... usually 2 cars and the trailer go about 16-18k. Empty the trailer weighs right at 8k. I was pulling unloaded up to St. Paul, MN a few months ago and doing about 80 MPH through Wisconsin. Blew a rear tire (on a dually) and it was ALL I could do to hold on to the truck and trailer and get it safely to the side of the road. If I had been hauling anything similar in weight with a SRW truck, I don't think the outcome would have been the same. After that I don't feel the same way I once did about hauling with a SRW truck... if it's a substantial load, I'll take a dually please.

[motorjock]

Thanks for all the replys. Most of them just reaffirm what I thought. I do have a 05 4x4 srw now. It's not like I had to have a dually, but if I could find a deal I wanted I thought why not. I would rather have 4wd but I guess it's not necessary. But I will say that the 3 or 4 times I've used mine it was worth the extra 3grand at the time. We also raise,sell and deliver hay (out this year) so we do pull some type of trailer at least 2 to 4 times a week.

Thanks again for all your replys.

[LeeChristianson]

Get the dually. You'll never go back.. As you can see from my sig I'm pulling a #12,000+ 5er and with this truck I hardly know anything's behind me. And, like another poster said above, you don't have to worry about tire inflation. Plus you have the already-mounted-spare-tire on each side.. LOL..

[SteveRacer]

If I had to give up something, it would be "4X4" before "dually".

I love my 4x4 CC longbed dually, but that combination makes it the probably worst turning vehicle that Ford ever offered. The short turning circle due to the length and the front powertrain cause far more a problem parking than the extra width in the dually rear fenders.

-steve

[powerboatr]

jason
drum roll.... your overweight for a 2000 f350
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