Dually pulling enclosed trailer

Duallys by design float more, less psi to the ground.
This kicks your butt on slick roads as your friction is cut in half.
Also run in to tracking problems where each tire pushes its own run of snow.
Can struggle more in deep snow as well as on Ice.
A good set up can overcome these obstacles, but take extra effort, or a good set of chains.

Last year had a dually pulling 4 sleds spin out in front of us on a hill, luckily I slid it backwards half controlled to flat ground.
He stuffed the bank, got pulled over the top by two other rigs.
Once hill was clear I drive right over in a duramax conversion suburban pulling 8 sleds in a 34’ trailer. He continued to struggle on top, I could stop, start, change direction with ease.

Lot of good uses for duallys, but not my choice for winter driver.

The dually is a lot more stable pulling heavy loads on good roads. As mentioned, traction suffers a lot in my opinion. If you are driving unplowed roads navigating the ruts from other vehicles, it can make your butt pucker. The very reason a dually is more stable is the same reason traction sucks on snow/mud/ice. For me, dually is great getting to the base of the mountain, sucks on the mountain.

Nothing wrong with a dually, just run good tires and put weight on the hitch. I will never go back to a single wheel, the stability you get from a dually for the 80-90% of the trip far outweighs the remaining 10-20% of trip. Outside dual may catch a little in heavy snow and dance a little, never found it to be a big deal, trailer follows the truck rather than push it around.

Rikster said:

I am in need of a dually and am wondering if anyone has any experience pulling an enclosed 4 place snowmobile trailer in the winter with a dually. I generally only make 1-2 trips out west each year and currently haul with a ram 2500.

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the main thing to remember is look in the mirror to make sure the trailer is still back there! it is amazing how well they tow.

i had studs on mine and it helped a lot. had to chain up more than with a single wheel but it was also a 11,000 trailer when it was loaded up. not sure how much of the chaining up to attribute to the dually or the heavy trailer.

As far as traction goes on hard, smooth surface like ice or really packed snow the two extra wheels in the back should not affect traction. If they do it is a tire/weight problem not an extra wheel problem. Friction force = Normal force*friction coefficient and is independent of surface area. My dad's 9,000# F450 with winter tires is pretty nice to drive in slick road conditions.

Now if you are trying to plow your way through 6-12" of mushy snow it can be a different story. With the same F450 only two sleds on the back of it isn't enough to push the wheels through to the ground and it tries to do the floating thing. Then it becomes a "not enough lug to grab the snow" problem and you will possibly find yourself chaining up. On the other hand my dad has a regular cab, long wheelbase, F350 DRW work truck with a V10 and a flatbed. When it was all loaded up it was 12-12,500#. He always put new off-road tires on it, sometimes studded, before winter and it was the most unstoppable truck I have ever seen in the deep snow going cross country. It didn't have a lift, but it sat just high enough and no box to drag that it rarely got hung up. That extra knobby wheel in the back was only adding more traction at that point. If you did get stuck with it the snow was hood level and you had to crawl out the windows to shovel just a little to either back out or back up and hit it again. 3/4 ton SRW trucks had to chain all fours to follow that thing through the tough stuff.

So all that being said, if you are going to be traveling plowed roads and usually park in plowed lots I wouldn't hesitate to go the DRW route. If you are trying to get back in the sticks with fresh snow on the road SRW might still be the ticket if you don't want to deal with chains.

boondocker97 said:

As far as traction goes on hard, smooth surface like ice or really packed snow the two extra wheels in the back should not affect traction. If they do it is a tire/weight problem not an extra wheel problem. Friction force = Normal force*friction coefficient and is independent of surface area. My dad's 9,000# F450 with winter tires is pretty nice to drive in slick road conditions.

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Not quite. You're correct about the theoretical friction equation, but assuming the same weight on the axle, the normal force on any one tire on a DRW is going to be approximately half of what it would be with a SRW and half as many tires.

The only DRW rig I've had driven enough to have an opinion on was an E-450-based short bus (state of Vermont said that the 14-passenger vans ski academies had been using forever weren't safe enough anymore). That thing was, as promised, damn near impossible to tip over, but it was also worse than an empty E-150 trying to go uphill with limited traction. The one time two of us had to move the entire fleet (something like 10 vans, three Suburbans, and two short busses) due to a snowstorm and plowing requirements, we ended up leaving the busses where they were because we couldn't get them out of their parking spaces. Having a trailer hooked to it might have helped with traction (more downward force on the drive wheels), but I'm not convinced—I think the biggest issue was the sheer amount of inertia with a vehicle that large.

I believe all of our rigs had snow tires on them, but I never did look at the short bus tires to see what they were.

I used to hate duallys in the past. Listened to too many "story's" of why duallys suck in the winter until an experienced dually owner challenged me to use his well set up dually one winter and the rest is history. I have a dually for a few years now. Used to run a 1 ton lb srw for a few years and a 3/4 ton SB before that. I will never go back to a srw, even on slick roads and snowed in roads. The set up is pretty simple. 2 key components. Having the right tires you and put wheel spacers on in the rear to widen the gap between two tires and wheels on each side. I will take a dually with this set up over a srw any day of the week.

Deep snow is more of a challenge for traction apples to apples dually to srw.
Moreso is bad setup. Less guys run burly tires on duallies. Highway tires suck no matter what you're driving.
The other big thing is tire pressure. Same with srw trucks, except it's more of a hassle to adjust tire pressure. Too many people think you run the pressure that's on the sidewall. Drop pressures to where they should be for the load which is suprisingly low with 4 tires even carrying a couple thousand lb payload and watch your traction get ALOT better.

Never owned one, but have plowed a lot of snow with duallies to know they can get around in the snow just fine.

I use my Ford dualities all the time pulling a 25’ trailer with 5 sleds And never had issues. Then again I also have a 6k Host mammoth camper that helps. Deepest I’ve drove in is 8” so can’t say I’ve drove in real deep before.

AZ800 said:

Deep snow is more of a challenge for traction apples to apples dually to srw.
Moreso is bad setup. Less guys run burly tires on duallies. Highway tires suck no matter what you're driving.
The other big thing is tire pressure. Same with srw trucks, except it's more of a hassle to adjust tire pressure. Too many people think you run the pressure that's on the sidewall. Drop pressures to where they should be for the load which is suprisingly low with 4 tires even carrying a couple thousand lb payload and watch your traction get ALOT better.

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You will get better traction but tire wear will suffer. Soft rubber better traction equals less miles and squishy side walls makes for not fun driving. 1000 lbs in box does wonders for traction.