Fifth wheel position

You're only thinking about level ground. How much easier do you think it would be up and down hills? I've carried 75# on my back for long distances without any problems. I would hate to drag that same weight for any comparable distance.

 

I personally always place as much weight as possible on my trailer tandem. I wouldn’t recommend this for flatbed trailers. Reefer and dry van trailers are loaded head first. Worst case scenario, if you follow my method you can have 30k on drives and 34k on trailer. That’s a difference of about 12%. The loader would have to be a knucklehead to load you heavy in the back, but it’s possible on multi-stop loads with fixed delivery stops. I personally have never had an issue with traction.

Now you may be wondering why I do this. I do it for fuel efficiency. It used to be that you would want to balance the weight between the drives and the trailer tandem, but with trailer skirts, it’s different. I believe increasing the efficiency of my trailer skirts by having the tandem as close to the trailer skirts as possible will result in better fuel economy than balancing the weight between the drives and the tandem. Do I have a way to prove it? No. The other reason why I also believe placing more weight on the trailer tandem is better is because the trailer tires have a tread pattern with less rolling resistance than the drive tires.

 

Physics wins every time:

 

I remember watching that video. They recommend at least 60% of the load to be placed on the front.

I think their test was a little exaggerated as nobody would place a load as shown in the test. They also need to define what “front” and “back” means. Their test used the tail of the trailer versus all the way forward.

 

This test would be accurate for center axle trailers. You'd be nuts (and extremely overweight on tandems) if you pulled tandems all the way forward and put 60% of 46k back there

 

The truck you see to the left has a 72" slide capability. the Fifth wheel pin will go from 12" ahead of the center of the tandems to 4" behind the rear tandem. I have handled literally 1000's of trailers in every conceivable configuration in the last 16 years. From 27' empty flatbed with a 12" pin setting to an oversize MorBark machine with a 60" pin setting grossing 110,000 lbs. I have had anywhere from 7500 lbs to 14,000 lbs on the front axle. Some of them were a real challenge to handle.
Which brings me to my point. There are a lot of considerations before the question can be answered. For the sake of this discussion, I am guessing you are referring to the most common, '53 foot van with a 36" pin setting. And the most common tractor layout, aerodynamic set back axle with 230" or so wheelbase, with maybe a 12" slide capability.
Even then, things like a refrig unit up front, weight on the drives, position of the trailer axles, all have significant effects on handling, backing etc. The only suggestion I can make is keep it as balanced as possible. No extremes anywhere.

 

I can not see any scenario to where it is beneficial to have more weight on the trailer than on the truck tandems. I have to pull 3, 4 and 5 axle trailes some, where it is normal to hdrag more weight than you are carrying, great if you like chaining up. The same even with a 2 axle trailer, that the load requires it be loaded tail heavy or the people just don't know hw to load one, it keeps the chains shiny.

There is a good reason why our winter truck tandems weight changes to where we are allowed 42,000 on the drives if running north, and we want it on there.

 

I like the fifth wheel as far forward as practical. The truck just rides better/smoother.

If you steer axle isn't overweight and the trailer/load isn't going to gouge the the truck in an odd sloped turn, why not?

I'm not sure why you would want to run the fifth wheel further back unless you were pulling a flatbed.

Just keep doing your thing they way you want to.

 

Even pulling a flatbed, you still have to get the weights right, it may need to be positioned different because of the difference in king pin settings, but depends on how it is loaded to where the fifth wheel needs to be.

 

I had forward with flatbed. 12.8 on the steers.

Back 2 notches for the stepdecks.