F450 tow truck tow capacity

Great response, especially with the scale tickets. So many people don't understand how heavy and specialized tow trucks really are.

A typical non-cdl "light duty" flatbed only has a payload of about 8,000 pounds, give or take a little. Many of these new electric vehicles are close, or exceed that, making towing companies choose between being legal on weight or upgrading to a CDL required chassis just to tow what used to be entry level stuff.

Heck, I'm delivering a 5 axle rotator today that has a tare weight of 72,000 pounds before they put any equipment or tools in it. These things are heavy.

 

The weight in a rollback is in the subframe structure. There is only about an 800 pound difference between a 21 foot steel deck and a 21 foot aluminum deck because they bothbsit on steel subframes.

 

Yeah our 50/60 is about 74,000 empty. We had a twin steer here for a few days and scaled it, was like 82,000. In the heavy wrecker world you just have to deal with being overweight most of the time, there is no way around it. I can scale some things with my 5030, but it is rare. For what he wants to move, to be legal i would look at a 20 or 25 ton with a tag or tandem.

 

Yeah, overweight is a way of life! I only move them for demonstrations and one dealer nowadays and for what I do I have to buy permits for each trip. They don't offer blanket overweight permits for dealer plates, so each trip requires indvidual weight, and even occasionally size (the Jerr-Dan rotator can be up to 42' long empty and many dtates limit to 40'). It was much easier when I owned them, just buy an annual overweight and overlength and life was good.

 

Yup. Accidently let this expire once. Won't do that ever again. $$$

 

Yeah there is a lot more than what you see on the surface with a tow truck. Good call.

 

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