How much dirt in the truck bed?

for these heavy dirt loads. Just rent a u-haul flat bed trailer for some peace of mind. Going over payload is abuse.

 

I needed to move 1 cubic yard of top soil yesterday and did it in 3 loads and didn't like the way the suspension was looking. I couldn't fathom putting in the whole yard at once.

 

You never said how bad it squatted. No matter what the math says, you can tell more by what the truck is doing and like others have said, 1500#'s has it sitting on the bumps and feeling everything in the road go right up your back.

Mine's been that over several times. I wouldn't want to go more than that, it doesn't steer well.

 

You likely did overfill the truck and likely were nearly double the bed payload if you went up the the rails, front to back.

Hauling 2000-ish pounds of dirt in the bed won't make the engine work as hard as a 5000+ pound trailer will. It will however work your suspension MUCH more because of it's positioning over/in front of the rear axle, where as that heavy trailer (assuming it's loaded correctly) only puts 500-600 pounds of weight on the rear of the vehicle. As long as you weren't slamming the bump stops over gnarly bumps, I'm quite positive you did no damage. Every truck I've ever had over the years (and it's been a LOT of trucks!) has been overloaded at least once in its life and I've never suffered any damages because of it. I certainly wouldn't make a habit of doing it on a regular basis though.

 

?? were did you learn math? cubic yd is 27 cubic ft

 

You also have to be careful hanging 500-600 pounds of tongue weight on a trailer hitch. Because you are also REMOVING weight from the front wheels. The force of adding 600 pounds to the hitch behind the axle, must be balanced by taking weight front of the axle. Think teeter totter on the playground, the springs think they are holding 860 pounds with 600 at the hitch. That 260 pound difference comes off of the front wheels. Based on the wheelbase of my truck, 127", and the distance from the rear axle to the hitch ball, 55".

600 pounds in front of the axle, puts load on both the front and rear suspension.

You can always "get away with" cheating, as long as everything goes right, but when you push the limits of machines, they tend to fail at the most inconvenient times.


Edited May 21, to add actual weight calculations.

 

A lot of people get measurements confused. A yard of sand, gravel or concrete, etc, will cover 108 sq ft. if you spread it 3" thick

 

Makes sense, I just figured he miss typed ^2 instead of ^3 .

 

Funny I ran into this thread, I may have overloaded my Taco yesterday (Stock 2019 TRD OR short bed).

I loaded dry compost to below the bed rails and the rear end sagged quite a bit but I wasn't on the bump stops.
I reckon I was within an inch or two of hitting them. I did technically hit the stops once....

I didn't really notice a ton of power loss so kudos to that engine but also my manual trans is geared pretty low so that helped.

I also drove like a granny.

According to the computer with stop and go traffic over 20 miles, I still got 20.6 MPGs on the way home (that little popup by the spedo when you turn the truck off).

 

...which equates to about 206 board feet...

 

Paid for a yard of gravel, guy loading it confirmed it was a yard. Some TW members said no way this was a yard.

Anyways, i drove about 40 miles on a highway and it didnt struggle at all. The only time i could really tell it was there, when i was braking. Lots of hills on that highway.

 

I guess that’s one advantage my ‘19 access cab utility long bed has, Max load is 1500 lbs.

 

My Taco is over GVWR at around 6k lbs. I've overloaded it many times from lawn debris.

Worse case, you'll kill your leaf springs early. I switched to Dakar heavy leafs and added Sumosprings to help with that.

You won't damage it from a little dirt. As long as you're not hauling literally tons of rocks daily, you have nothing to worry about.


I use a trailer when I can. There's less cleanup, and they're cheap. I'm on my third Harbor Freight utility trailer in 10 years, I just run the $300, 1-ton capacity one into the ground, sell it on Craigslist for a couple of hundred, and go buy another. The one I have now I swapped a higher rated axle and wheels onto. I'm hoping the tires will last longer with the heavier axle. This is around 3k lbs of rocks I picked up for the yard last weekend:

 

You are probably ok if you didn't break or bend anything with that load, if you start having issues with your rear diff etc, prematurely...you'll know you weren't ok. Those components also take abuse and stress when over loaded or towing too heavy as well. The tacoma diffs seem to be pretty robust so you are probably ok.

 

I overloaded my bed with landscaping rocks a few weekends ago. It was very foolish and I got lucky to not damage anything. My advice is to make sure you follow what it says in the manual. I took a pic of the sag and it will never be seen by human eyes.

 

So, I have a 2017 Tacoma OR long bed. Do you all think I will have any problems putting a 1/2 ton of planting soil (1000lb) in the bed of my truck and transporting it around 30 miles?

 

You can haul more than you think in a Tacoma but it will be super unstable going down the road. I would not do this more than once...

 

Is that a half ton?

 

I used my 2004 Tacoma Access Cab OR to haul dirt, gravel and mulch quite a bit, hauled trash and metal to the dump and put anything else I could think of in the bed. Then I got the 2020 Pro. Not long after we got it home, my wife looked at me and said "I know there is no way you'll put that stuff in the back of your new truck." Bingo. New trailer. Plus, I can now take my UTV, ATV, Zero Turn and Lawn Tractor in for service myself without having to pay someone to get them.

 

I had a 1000 pounds of steel in the bed last week with no problem so you should be fine.