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hauling dirt with 2.5 ton

chestypuller1371

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how many yard of dirt can you haul in your troop bed? i have one thats converted to dump the bed. i was wondering how it will do hauling dirt and gravel, i might extend the sides up if it handles it ok.0120161457-01.jpg
 

DDoyle

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While I have no first-hand experience with such conversions, considering the woes that the army had with full-length dump beds on the CCKW, I'd be cautious. In fact, when the army first wanted a dump on the G-742 chassis, they opted for one 3-feet shorter to prevent overloading. The shorter bed, which was purpose-built as a dump bed, had a 2 1/2-yard capacity. So, I'd speculate that a conversion would have a capacity well less than that.

Best,
David Doyle
www.DavidDoyleBooks.com
 

chestypuller1371

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While I have no first-hand experience with such conversions, considering the woes that the army had with full-length dump beds on the CCKW, I'd be cautious. In fact, when the army first wanted a dump on the G-742 chassis, they opted for one 3-feet shorter to prevent overloading. The shorter bed, which was purpose-built as a dump bed, had a 2 1/2-yard capacity. So, I'd speculate that a conversion would have a capacity well less than that.

Best,
David Doyle
www.DavidDoyleBooks.com

i had one of them also, that was a good truck. it was a dump also.
 

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sandcobra164

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The truck as designed will handle whatever you put into the bed. As designed means good tires and good thoroughly checked brakes. Most Deuces have a single circuit air boosted hydraulically actuated brake system. As far as moving the load, it'll be fine but perhaps slow. Luckily, the transfer case is synchronized and with a heavy load, you'd do yourself a favor to practice "split shifting". Start out in low range, front axle not engaged. Run gears 1-4, clutch, shift transfer lever up, run 4 high and 5 high if the terrain / traffic allows. Give yourself plenty of room to slow down and you should be fine. My heaviest load behind a Deuce with brakes was an MK-18 trailer. The brakes on that trailer were so good, I doubt my trucks shoes ever touched the drums. Heaviest without brakes on towed load was an M818 tractor with no brakes. Both tows were slow but I'd take the heavier trailer with working brakes over the tractor with no brakes any day.
 

saddamsnightmare

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January 24th, 2016.

As always the vaunted opinion makers will steer you very wrong.

Usually military and civilian dump trucks are shorter with the rear axle closer to the rear of the frame to support the dump mechanism hinge point and not overbalance the truck. I would deduct the weight of your hoist mechanism and deduct yet more as the truck has a cargo, not a dump bed. density of loaded materials will vary greatly as regards being gravel, rock, slag, dirt, clay or sand. The cargo bed is designed for troops or boxed supplies of rather light density, not rock or sand.

You will find that your truck will be very unhappy if overloaded, and depending on where you are unloading, leave your drivers door open while dumping, you may want to be able to jump before she flips over a bank or into a ravine..... I might have said cough up for the dump version from the start, you would have had a better truck.
 

rustystud

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January 24th, 2016.

As always the vaunted opinion makers will steer you very wrong.

Usually military and civilian dump trucks are shorter with the rear axle closer to the rear of the frame to support the dump mechanism hinge point and not overbalance the truck. I would deduct the weight of your hoist mechanism and deduct yet more as the truck has a cargo, not a dump bed. density of loaded materials will vary greatly as regards being gravel, rock, slag, dirt, clay or sand. The cargo bed is designed for troops or boxed supplies of rather light density, not rock or sand.

You will find that your truck will be very unhappy if overloaded, and depending on where you are unloading, leave your drivers door open while dumping, you may want to be able to jump before she flips over a bank or into a ravine..... I might have said cough up for the dump version from the start, you would have had a better truck.
You said that right ! I own a small 7 ton dump truck and there have been some scary situations I got myself into by not paying attention to the load I was carrying ! Wet sand is one of them ! I actually had the truck pointing to the sky when I tried to dump an oversize load once !
 

11Echo

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You said that right ! I own a small 7 ton dump truck and there have been some scary situations I got myself into by not paying attention to the load I was carrying ! Wet sand is one of them ! I actually had the truck pointing to the sky when I tried to dump an oversize load once !
The dump setup on the M342A2 works great.
 

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Ferroequinologist

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It isn't so much of will the truck haul it as will the bed and frame stand up to dumping it. The bed of a cargo deuce is designed to hold a good amount of weight when flat on the frame rails. Once you remove that support it is subject to stresses from many areas no designed for such stess. If I converted a cargo, I would pick a limit I knew was well within the capacity of the setup, and stick with that at all times. Another way yet time consuming and costy, would be get a load at x tons. Then get the next at 500-1000, until you hual a load that doesn't haul and dump to your satisfaction. Then back off that load size and stick with that.

My 5ton dump surprised me. I tried to get 10 tons of crushed concrete in it, but the stock bed only holds 5. Around here they only seem to sell by the ton, not yards.
 

m16ty

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You can haul dirt until it's running off the sides and you'll be ok. You can get over the weight limit hauling a full load of gravel. The stock bed will work fine as long as you stay within the factory sides. Only thing you'll run into is the bed floor is fairly thin and if you haul big rock it will dent the floor bad.

With that being said, I've seen a deuce with a 9 ton load of gravel (it wasn't mine). The truck handled it surprisingly well but I'd never try it myself. You could tell it was loaded but it didn't look like anything was going to break.

The ideal bed setup for a dumptruck is 60/40. That means 60% of the bed in front of the axle and 40% behind the axle. The deuce is closer to 50/50 but it works ok.

Here's a pic of my dump setup. I've hauled a bunch of stuff and it's never let me down. http://www.steelsoldiers.com/showthread.php?50583-Started-my-dump-conversion/page3&highlight=dump
 

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cattlerepairman

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Notice how much narrower the dump bed is compared to a standard cargo bed. ( probably a good reason behind why the engineers designed it that way)
My guess is that they anticipated that the truck would be loaded until the material spilled over the side extensions, regardless of what any manual suggested you do. They made the bed narrower to limit Soldier A's ability to FUBAR. We all know that you can't eliminate this ability.
 

DDoyle

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The entire G-742 series of trucks (i.e. - M35-style) were designed as replacements for the WWII-era CCKW, drawing on lessons learned from those vehicles as well as advances in automotive engineering and the quest for standardization. At the outset of WWII, automotive specialists with the Quartermaster Corps laid down the criteria for trucks, and when it came to 2 1/2-ton 6x6 dump trucks, specified a shorter bed in order to prevent overloading when loaded with high-density materials.

The Engineers did not like this, because they wanted to be able to transport a full squad of men in the truck, or long timbers, if the truck was not being used to transport loose bulk cargo (i.e. - used as a dump truck). About the same time, responsibility for truck development was transferred from the Quartermaster Corps to the Ordnance Corps.

A compromise was reached, and the CCKW Cargo-Dump was born. This truck had a hinged flap in the the forward portion of the bed which was to be raised when the vehicle was being used as a dump truck, with the cargo to occupy only the area to the rear of the flap, in order to prevent overloading. This reduced the effective capacity of the bed from 3.85 cubic yards to 2.58 cubic yards.

When the G-742 family rolled around, again the designers preferred a shorter dump body, and accordingly the M47 and M59 were created, with 9-foot dump bodies on 142-inch wheelbase chassis, dumping pretty much right at the rear wheels. Once again, the Engineers bemoaned that a squad could not be transported in the truck, and also complaining that the M47 and M59 dump too close to the rear axles.

Along came the 2.5 cubic yard M342 dump truck, with a 11-foot bed, like the M47 and M59 utilizing a subframe to support the bed, but also boasting two lift cylinders. The sideboards of the M342 are lower than that of the M47 and M59, and all three are narrower than a cargo bed and are of more robust construction than that of the cargo trucks.

That said, the dump capacity of all of these trucks is well below that of a commercial dump truck. Table 11 of TM 9-2320-209-10 provides an extensive list of weight/cubic yard limits, noting that both heaping and level full of dirt, the truck will be over the rated cross-country limit, and with sand heaping the truck is even over the on-road limits.

Beyond the obvious operator (and other motorists' safety concerns), overloading any of these trucks risks bending the frame, a failure that tends to happen just behind the cab on un-modified vehicles, and overloading the bed itself. As another poster pointed out, the M35 cargo bed is designed to essentially lay flat on the frame rails. Using at as a dump is going to concentrate the lifting force in smaller area, as well as possibly transferring the direction of the force of the cargo to angles beyond those intended by the designers.

There are vast differences between might, should, has, may, usually and will. The engineers who designed these things worked in the realm of "will," all the other verbs are gambling terms introduced by end users (military and civilian), so as Dirty Harry says, "do you feel lucky?"

Hope this helps,
David Doyle
www.DavidDoyleBooks.com

M35A2w/w
M35A2
Class 530C
M36A2
M36A2w/w
M292A2
M764
M756
M135
M123A1C
M62
M45 w/210G1 compressor
CMU-5
 
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11Echo

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The entire G-742 series of trucks (i.e. - M35-style) were designed as replacements for the WWII-era CCKW, drawing on lessons learned from those vehicles as well as advances in automotive engineering and the quest for standardization. At the outset of WWII, automotive specialists with the Quartermaster Corps laid down the criteria for trucks, and when it came to 2 1/2-ton 6x6 dump trucks, specified a shorter bed in order to prevent overloading when loaded with high-density materials.

The Engineers did not like this, because they wanted to be able to transport a full squad of men in the truck, or long timbers, if the truck was not being used to transport loose bulk cargo (i.e. - used as a dump truck). About the same time, responsibility for truck development was transferred from the Quartermaster Corps to the Ordnance Corps.

A compromise was reached, and the CCKW Cargo-Dump was born. This truck had a hinged flap in the the forward portion of the bed which was to be raised when the vehicle was being used as a dump truck, with the cargo to occupy only the area to the rear of the flap, in order to prevent overloading. This reduced the effective capacity of the bed from 3.85 cubic yards to 2.58 cubic yards.

When the G-742 family rolled around, again the designers preferred a shorter dump body, and accordingly the M47 and M59 were created, with 9-foot dump bodies on 142-inch wheelbase chassis, dumping pretty much right at the rear wheels. Once again, the Engineers bemoaned that a squad could not be transported in the truck, and also complaining that the M47 and M59 dump too close to the rear axles.

Along came the 2.5 cubic yard M342 dump truck, with a 11-foot bed, like the M47 and M59 utilizing a subframe to support the bed, but also boasting two lift cylinders. The sideboards of the M342 are lower than that of the M47 and M59, and all three are narrower than a cargo bed and are of more robust construction than that of the cargo trucks.

That said, the dump capacity of all of these trucks is well below that of a commercial dump truck. Table 11 of TM 9-2320-209-10 provides an extensive list of weight/cubic yard limits, noting that both heaping and level full of dirt, the truck will be over the rated cross-country limit, and with sand heaping the truck is even over the on-road limits.

Beyond the obvious operator (and other motorists' safety concerns), overloading any of these trucks risks bending the frame, a failure that tends to happen just behind the cab on un-modified vehicles, and overloading the bed itself. As another poster pointed out, the M35 cargo bed is designed to essentially lay flat on the frame rails. Using at as a dump is going to concentrate the lifting force in smaller area, as well as possibly transferring the direction of the force of the cargo to angles beyond those intended by the designers.

There are vast differences between might, should, has, may, usually and will. The engineers who designed these things worked in the realm of "will," all the other verbs are gambling terms introduced by end users (military and civilian), so as Clint Eastwood says, "do you feel lucky?"

Hope this helps,
David Doyle
www.DavidDoyleBooks.com
For some of us that have owned and used the M342a2's for years we are quite well in tune to what they are capable of in the real world. Yes, we feel lucky!
 

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11Echo

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You can haul dirt until it's running off the sides and you'll be ok. You can get over the weight limit hauling a full load of gravel. The stock bed will work fine as long as you stay within the factory sides. Only thing you'll run into is the bed floor is fairly thin and if you haul big rock it will dent the floor bad.

With that being said, I've seen a deuce with a 9 ton load of gravel (it wasn't mine). The truck handled it surprisingly well but I'd never try it myself. You could tell it was loaded but it didn't look like anything was going to break.

The ideal bed setup for a dumptruck is 60/40. That means 60% of the bed in front of the axle and 40% behind the axle. The deuce is closer to 50/50 but it works ok.

Here's a pic of my dump setup. I've hauled a bunch of stuff and it's never let me down. http://www.steelsoldiers.com/showthread.php?50583-Started-my-dump-conversion/page3&highlight=dump

Data plates for M342A2's showing location of CG for a properly equipped deuce dump.
 

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