Collapsing wheels

Joined
Jan 10, 2022
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When we got home from Newfoundland I decided to build a wheeled carrier for my Hallmark Guanella. It would not fit in the garage on the truck and I wanted to store it under cover for winter. I ordered some wheels from Amazon rated at 2800 pounds for the set. This seemed ok because the empty camper was supposed to weigh about 1700 pounds. So I built the cart and bolted on the wheels and when I lowered the camper onto the cart, the two wheels under the front of the camper collapsed. I don’t know how much that end of the camper weighs but it is much, much more than half of the total. Amazon refunded my $45 and the next set I ordered was for 5000 pounds. They cost about 3 times as much but they worked! This weight distribution of my camper I suspect puts more weight on the front end of my truck than I had imagined.
 
Take the loaded truck/camper to a CAT scale. They will give you weight per axle.
So if I knew the weight on the front and rear of the truck, how would that information help me know the weight of the front and rear of the camper?
 
Weigh the truck with loaded camper.
Weigh the truck without camper.
Subtract.
CAT scale gives weight on each axle and total weight:
1cat.jpg
 
Based on the weight and the 34 inches from the front of the truck bed cg location shown on the Hallmark website, a good ballpark guess is the front pair of casters has about 1200 lbs on it and the rear pair has about 600 lbs on it, assuming your dolly wheelbase is 8 feet.
 
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