Flamingtaco

So many posts ripping on max trailer rating as useless... completely discounting the hundreds of thousands of F series trucks in use on farms, pulling hay trailers and equipment that place little load on the truck (30-100lb arm).

It's not there just to prove which truck has the biggest dick. It's a number that some people need to determine the farm implements they can pull.

I understand it can't be used to determine 5th or bumper pull numbers, but don't understand why so post have a snarky and dismissive air, as if the max tow rating is offensive.

Not a farmer, but understand that max tow rating is far from useless for many F series owners. We're not even that far removed from when trucks were mostly owned by growers of plants and livestock.

Comments?

Are there any here that use their F truck in this manner?

Ricktwuhk

In over 5 years on the forum, I can recall maybe one person asking about farm towing. All the other posts ask about travel trailer towing, a few about horse trailer towing or boat towing. The vast majority of F-150s are not used in farms. Based on questions asked, many truck owners barely understand their specific towing limitations, so spending time explaining to them what they could pull if they were a farmer with a hay wagon would simply confused them (I have mentioned it on occasion).

There are 2 million farms in the US. There are just under 1 million F series sold per year.

ifallsron

Many trailer pullers hook up and drive like the wind, leaving good sense behind.

A farmer should know all the risks involved in towing. I don't see hay or cattle wagons going 80 down the freeway.

sbronemann

I use my truck on our 5 acre property weekly. My in-laws farm 500 acres here in eastern Iowa and I usually use my F-150 to pull the 25 ft bean platform around behind the combine. It has also pulled the hay-rack around a few times last summer with a full load of small squares. It gets used quite frequently around the farm.

old_programmer

Many of the "Can I tow this?" threads I've seen do mention that one of applications that will not exceed payload limitations and be able to reach max towing rating are flat towed trailers like you see on farms. However most F-150s are used by home owners like myself or businesses and the forum threads tend to reflect this.

ModularFord

smokeywren

Most of the threads you're discussing do mention that GCWR and tow rating are useful only for wagon-style trailers that have minimal tongue weight. Such as a farm wagon for hauling hay or grain or - here in the cotton belt - a cotton boll wagon. I grew up in the 1950s towing cotton boll wagons from the middle of the cotton patch to the gin. Minimal tongue weight, so no worry about payload capacity. We just cared if the tow vehicle had enough power and traction to drag that trailer out of the sandy field, then tow it to the gin a few miles down the road at about 45 or 50 MPH.
[img]http://www.jbgorganic.com/blog/wp-co...09/02/pic4.jpg

Almost all of the cotton boll wagons have now been replaced by trucks for hauling cotton modules (ricks). Most ricks are around 20,000 pounds, so most module hauling trucks are class 7 or 8 trucks.
[img]https://www.cottonpickers.com/images...82e6d_35ky.jpg

The cotton stripper machine dumps cotton bolls into a module builder, or more likely into a boll buggy that can hold several dumps before hauling the harvested cotton to the module builder. . The boll buggy is towed to a nearby module builder by a farm tractor.
[img]https://www.bing.com/th?id=OIP.lH7_R...qlt=80&pid=3.1

The boll buggy dumps the loose cotton bolls into the module builder, where is it compacted into a rick or module.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_module_builder

Cotton harvesting machines are either cotton pickers or cotton strippers. Cotton pickers actually pick the cotton out of the open bolls. Cotton strippers strip all the leaves and bolls of cotton from the plant. In west Texas, all the harvesting machines are cotton strippers.

After the module builder is packed full, then the module builder ejects the rick out the back end of the module builder and the builder is moved to another location, leaving the rick in the field. Then a module hauler truck backs up to the rick and loads it, then hauls it to the gin. So no need for the old cotton-hauling trailers.

Some of the old cotton trailers are now used as hay wagons. They don't make good highway hauling trailers because of the suspension and wagon-style design.

sbronemann

A few years back, my father-in-law just got done harvesting the beans for the year and was switching to corn. Field was about 10 miles from the home-farm. My mother-in-law had already left with the other tractor and wagons and there was one little wagon with about 125ish bushels of soybeans on it. I had my truck there as I met him out there after work. He had already moved the other tractor and wagons to the other field in preparation for the switch to corn. So instead of driving 10 miles back to farm to get other tractor and then another 10 miles of travel in tractor, I decided to just hook it up to my truck and pull it to co-op with my F-150(2011 SCAB 5.0 4wd). Put it in 4hi and away I went. Got going down the road probably 25ish and was pulling just fine. Took it out of 4wd on the fly. Came up to a decent sized Iowa hill and the rear just started hopping like crazy in 2wd. Eased off the throttle and shifted back into 4wd and didn't have anymore issues. Just took it slow, downshifted, and braked very easily. Didn't have any problems pulling it per se, just no traction being a gravity wagon and no tongue weight. I figured it was probably close to 8500 lbs or so being only a 175 bu gravity wagon.

Flamingtaco

That's a whole lot of information about... cotton! Thanks for the links!

Mach5

Unlike most of this forum's members (present company excluded, of course), farmers understand their towing needs before buying their trucks. They have better things to do than hang out on forums asking others if their shiny new truck can tow that gigantic toy hauler they saw at the RV show last weekend.