It’s been a while since the last installment of our Overloaded series. I pulled up behind this sagging S-10 last June at an intersection near my home. I think this is the guy who trolls the neighborhoods in my part of town on trash day, picking out the junk he can resell. I rather like it that he does it. My old easy chair gave up the ghost earlier this year. It was too broken to donate to Goodwill with a clean conscience, but not so broken that someone more ingenious than I could jury-rig a fix. With determination, it could live to seat another man. So I set it out on trash day and it was gone within the hour.
At any rate, check out that characteristic rear-tire bulge. And there’s some obvious incline from the end of the bed. He putted away from this light verrrrry slowly.
For more serious overloading, check out this truck.
Around here we’ve got cardboard collectors who all have compact pickups that they build up enormous plywood boxes onto the beds of. Why they don’t use F-150s or something is beyond me.
This is actually a modest example:
In San Francisco back in July I saw a 97-04 F-150 set up like that and the wooden cargo walls doubled the height of the truck. Paul has even done an article on a local scrap cardboard collector that lives in Eugene. So, where was your photo taken?
I didn’t take it, but it’s San Francisco. A 97-04 would be practically new for these guys.
What is the cargo weight limit for these trucks anyway? There cannot be more than 500-600 Lbs in the back of that S-10, but what license plate is that? There were a few times I loaded up my 95 Voyager with about 400 Lbs of scrap metal including a Sofa frame that required me to tie the tailgate down because it would not fit in the back; at least she came from the factory with 6 or so leafsprings. The most difficult trip was that 400 Lbs load including a mini furnace because the most direct road to the scrap yard was windy hilly country roads and I did not want the Tranny hunting so I either stayed at 27 or below or 33 and up. At least people gave me plenty of space and patience.
Your traffic cops must be more easygoing than UK ones,we also have VOSA to keep us on our toes.
I think that left tire is under inflated as well, besides any additional weight in the bed.
I don’t see scenes like this too often in my city, but the police definitely will stop people that have not cleared their cars of snow properly. Including clearing all the windows, lights and roof.
Just sold an S10 that would carry a 3/4 ton round bale of hay. This isn’t overloaded. Now whether the load is secured or not can sure be debated.
Scrappers. They can be a clever bunch sometimes… but they sure manage to use and abuse vehicles to the nth degree in the process.
One old man around here had an ’80s Ford Ranger pickup that was more rust than truck. You could literally stand on one side of the box, and look clear through to daylight on the other side – it was that rusty. But that didn’t stop him from loading on the prepared farm iron, 1000 or so pounds at a time, and take it down to the local recycling outfit. He’d occasionally be seen towing some implement behind as well.
For weeks he made at least two such hauls a day. Still can’t believe that little truck was able to take it!
….the bottom-feeder scrappers use cars and minivans.. . The worst vehicle I ever saw “scrapping” was a pristine 50K 1973 Buick Century coupe. The lowlife thief somehow acquired this poor car & regularly loaded it with stolen railroad iron… of course he hauled it to my father’s scrapyard to raise my blood pressure, so it seems.
I had to help unload the fool’s car — he even threw the iron plates in the back seat… Seeing fresh tears in the original vinyl & new gouges in that unobtainable interior plastic made my blood boil — the car was trashed in no time.
Just to twist the knife…his next stop was the convenience store two-doors down — gotta load up on da beer for da next load.
Oh, did I mention I had a ’73 Century GS455 at that time & needed all these parts? 🙁
There is a guy around here who also uses a car, but not as nice as the Buick you describe – it’s a late ’90’s Chrysler Sebring Convertible. As the top is always down, height of the load is never an issue, although he has got to be getting close to some underpasses. I have yet to be able to snag a picture of it.
I am getting a visual not unlike that of the Grinch’s sleigh, full of stolen toys from Whoville.
For the man who destroyed this creampuff Century, I say…
Jim, whenever you see this S-10 loaded up, I hope this song goes through your head…
You know what they say about the payload of a pick-up, “There’s no limit on the vertical”
I never saw shit that crazy when driving through New Mexico (yellow license plate, scenery) and I wonder how they did it.
Let me take a wild guess… Very slowly
4.25 metres is our limit vertical.
My father-in-law put 13,000 lbs of scrap metal in a 2,500 lb trailer and he hauled it eight miles to the scrap yard behind his ’99 Dodge 1500. It did fine other than the trailer started to sway pretty bad at around 35 mph.
Wow, I am surprised none of the metal or suspension broke. So, why did it start to sway around 35?
The trailer had a mild kink in the frame. And we hadn’t exactly spread the weight around very well. And it had mismatched tires.
I wouldn’t have any concern with the weight, only that the load is properly secured so nothing flies out while going down the road.
I once put nearly a ton of scrap iron and steel in the bed of my late and lamented ’77 Silverado… the rear bumper was mere inches above the pavement.
As an ex scrapper I’ve hauled some decent loads. Once I hauled a early eighties full size wagon and sedan stacked two high, with the wagons roof crushed down with my 86 Burbank half ton and a 18 foot long tandem equipment trailer. The weight was 4.17 ton and it was all the old 6.2 diesel could do to back that load up my drive way.
Most dangerous match: a heap of (wet) sand in the toy single axle Fisher-Price trailer of the DIY-contractor. Or concrete tiles, another natural born overloader given the car and trailer they’re using to haul them.
Back a few years ago I had a 1984 Nissan 4×4 pickup and needed some gravel for my driveway. At the gravel yard the truck weighed 3400lbs so it being a 1/2 ton truck I had the front-load operator fill the bed with a peaked load that looked about 1000lbs. Tires did look a little bulgy but was really surprised when the scale readout showed 6800 lbs on it, so the truck had it’s own weight in the back. Not having a shovel with me I decided to drive it home, altho getting up the hill from the yard did require some clutch slipping. On the highway it was all over the road and took a block to stop at the next light. I had a 7+ mile drive thru two towns and was gripping the wheel till my fingers turned blue and was hoping nobody pulled out in front of me. It made it but after that I was a little more conservative on my loading. I tell you gravel is some heavy stuff.
Know the feeling,I worked for a landscape gardener when home for summer from University.I remember sailing through a red light in a Ford Cortina estate loaded with tools,4 passengers and a single axle trailer well overloaded,fortunately without any other cars or traffic cops about.
When I was a kid we had a homemade utility trailer. Upon arrival it had a 67-72 Chevy fleetside 8′ bed, a Willys pickup frame, and a Chevy rear axle of unknown origin. My old man removed the box and built a wood bed for it, which was designed to haul our jon boat or dirtbikes equally well.
I was probably six, and my brother was three, when we moved into town. Our homemade sandbox also came along – an elaborate wooden affair with no bottom, but a full covered peaked roof, a “dash” with a mid-70s Chevy steering wheel, four seats at the four corners, and everything else two kids needed to dream up a backyard adventure.
Upon arriving at the new place, the sandbox was in need of sand. So we took the trailer up to the lake (maybe 30 miles away) and loaded it up with what seemed a reasonable amount of sand, scooped five gallons at a time and carried up from the beach. It was perhaps 150 gallons’ worth at the absolute worst.
Still, that was enough to be trouble. The poor old axle underneath just wasn’t having any of it after the first ten or so miles. We had to keep stopping and letting the bearings cool every couple miles.
After finally making it home, the trailer immediately got “upgraded” with a rear axle from some ’80s Mopar minivan – which continues fulfilling its purpose to this day.
The family business is tile, granite, marble, that sorta thing. Heavy goods that need beefy trucks. Back in the early 70′s I needed to haul materials to a job site and planned on making 3 trips. 2 for the goods and a 1 trip to haul tools. Dad says “hell no, you do it all in one load’. The beast of burden was a 1964 Dodge 3/4 ton pickup with a camper suspension package and a granny gear 4 speed manual. I looked like a refuge from Afghanistan rollin’ down the road. The 318 strained mightily under the load. Halfway through the 30 mile trip the aroma of slipping clutch filled the cab. I had to be careful coming off of stop lights because the a$$ end was so heavy the front wheels would come off the ground. I don’t think I got over 20mph that trip,not just due to the load, but I didn’t want anything to fall off, or, heaven forbid, tip over. By the time I pulled up, my old man was waiting , already pissed off because I took so long to get there. He beat me there, but then again, in those days he was driving a Lincoln Continental Mark III. We abused the hell outta that old truck. Changed the oil about once every 10,000 miles. Kept air in the tires and gas in the tank. That’s all the love that thing got.
My other overload stories involve escapades in aircraft, so that’s for another website.