Ram throws down the heavy duty towing gauntlet
If you want to tow more than 14,000 kilograms out in the real world, you’ll need a special licence. But at the Chelsea Proving Grounds, there’s a network of roads on the 3,850-acre facility developed expressly for testing, and they’re all privately owned by Chrysler.
Behind me stretches 33 feet of flatbed trailer, piled high with steel plates. The combined weight of this colossal load is 31,000 pounds (14,061 kg). Yet the truck it’s hitched to is not a big rig requiring a Class 5 Licence, but the newest, beefed-up version of Ram’s Heavy Duty 3500 pickup. Thanks to some internal tweaking to its 385-horsepower, 6.7-litre Cummins diesel engine, Ram has once again upped the ante in the ongoing, heavy-duty numbers war, with a stupefying 900 pound-feet of torque and a 31,210-lb (14,157-kg) max tow rating.
Fired with both barrels blazing, that challenge was a direct hit on competitor Ford, which had thrown down 860 lb-ft of torque and max tow rating of 31,200 lbs in response to Ram’s previous 850 lb-ft/30,000-lb challenge.
“To put it into perspective,” said Jeff Johnson, brand manager for Ram’s Heavy Duty Trucks, “I like to say that the competition can hook up their max load, and we’ll tow them and their trailer.”
Last year, Ram announced its intention to comply with SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) J2807 standardized tow testing, confident that its ratings would pass the intensive, thirdparty scrutiny. Ford, and then GM, eventually followed suit. With such lofty bragging rights at stake, there had been some wiggle room in performance numbers touted by manufacturer’s marketing departments. Adopting the J2807 standard ensures that all posted ratings are attained under the same conditions and helps ensure that the customer will also be able to achieve the same performance.
Ram has a long, symbiotic history with Cummins Diesel, working closely through shared resources to produce these rugged, high-performance powertrains. While the Ram lineup features several powertrain choices, the class-leading torque and towing numbers apply only to the combination of the 6.7L in-line six diesel engine with Aisin six-speed transmission. Horsepower remains the same, but that unbelievable 900 lb-ft of torque is available at only 1,700 rpm.
While all of the Heavy Duty Rams use a three-link coil suspension up front, 2500 models feature a rear five-link coil spring or optional air suspension that replaces the coils with airbags. The 3500 series, however, has a more traditional leafspring rear setup capable of handling the bigger loads. Optional air suspension augments, rather than replaces, the rear springs, contributing automatic load levelling and delivering a smoother ride. The air system’s ability to lower the rear end with the push of a button is a huge help in trailer hookup.
Ram had almost every conceivable truck configuration in its lineup available for us to road test, including the light-duty Ram 1500 Eco Diesel and Pro Master. Heavy Duty models were hitched to a variety of towing setups, including cargo trailers, flatbeds loaded with heavy Case construction equipment, dump trucks and enclosed car haulers. Over closed road system at the proving grounds, we evaluated ride comfort, performance, handling and braking on level ground and on grades. For the most part, the trucks handled their respective loads with comparative ease. Those with the air suspension displayed the smoothest ride characteristics.
“Towing is the number 1 reason people buy heavy-duty trucks,” Johnson said. And with tow ratings reaching such stratospheric levels, breaking the 1,000 lb-ft barrier is within the realm of possibility.