Sled Decks

[catalac]

Deck for spring, trailer for winter…

 

[Summitric]

205,000 easy, older man driven kms.

HAHAHA, sorry Doug, I was asking Dean how many clicks he had on his Ram 3500 ... last I saw it was over 800,000kms? My mistake

 

[ferniesnow]

HAHAHA, sorry Doug, I was asking Dean how many clicks he had on his Ram 3500 ... last I saw it was over 800,000kms? My mistake

and here I thought you may be interested or know of a person who would be interested in my old truck.

 

[Grinder]

Naw Ric its only 682000km. For now

 

[X-it]

Another bunch of questions, thanks for being patient with me.
We both have daily drivers, so our new long box F350 4x4 is used only for big truck stuff. Currently pull an enclosed trailer with our sleds or quads in it.
If I sell the trailer, and get a deck, does it make the truck very tippy having so much weight up high?
Are they scary/dangerous to load and unload.
Do the sleds get filthy on the dirty winter roads?
Is it okay to leave the sleds and quads loaded all the time, or is that too much weight to be on there most of the year.
We would like to buy a small RV trailer, would towing be an issue with a deck? Please note this is not a dual rear tire model of truck.
It has an 8' box, large 4 door cab, 7.3 gasoline engine, and 4x4. For small truck things like dump runs, and as a daily driver my Ridgeline works perfectly. If just going on a road trip, the wife has an awd Stinger.
This is our first 1 ton truck, I previously owned a Tundra, and 911, never had a sled deck, a bit worried about loading and unloading, and driveability.

Not sure where you are planning on riding, but if you go on the backroads here and pull a trailer.. man is that sketchy. Nothing like holding up a line up of logging trucks when you are jack knifed on a narrow logging road because you missed the pullout. Way safer with a sled deck and they hold the road great and easy to turn around on those narrow roads. Not sure how far west of pg you are, but houston, telkwa and smithers maybe better than the torpy, mcbride , valmount. Yes your sleds will get muddy at times without covers on them, your truck will pack them no problem. I have seen a guy fall off the passenger side of the deck and break his hip trying to start his sled, loading and unloading might be scary for the first few tries. Not much tree riding west of town, more so east of town, more snow as well.

 

[pano-dude]

I converted my 8foot box bush truck to an 11 foot flat deck. Wouldn't go back to a box and deck again. Need to figure out a better solution for slide in ramp storage though. Tri fold ramp is a pita.
My 21 ram 3500 may get a flat deck conversion too, tired of having to jump in the box to grab anything out of the tool box.

 

[ferniesnow]

I converted my 8foot box bush truck to an 11 foot flat deck. Wouldn't go back to a box and deck again. Need to figure out a better solution for slide in ramp storage though. Tri fold ramp is a pita.
My 21 ram 3500 may get a flat deck conversion too, tired of having to jump in the box to grab anything out of the tool box.

The flat deck on my mid-deck is built on 2 6” pieces of channel that sit on top of the frame with a hinged door on the rear. I have added an enclosure in the front and along the sides to keep out the highway grime. Works well.

 

[Cheers]

The flat deck on my mid-deck is built on 2 6” pieces of channel that sit on top of the frame with a hinged door on the rear. I have added an enclosure in the front and along the sides to keep out the highway grime. Works well.

Would you post a couple of close up pics sometime please.

 

[ferniesnow]

Would you post a couple of close up pics sometime please.

These are when the deck was just brought back from Idaho. It has since had LineX applied, clearance lights added, SuperGlides/SuperClamp hooks on the decking.

 

[Cheers]

Thank you @ferniesnow

 

[Annacassandra]

Loading/unloading can be pretty sketchy at first but once you get used to it it's not too bad. My first sled was a Polaris SKS with a 2.4" track and the paddles were too soft to walk up the ramp and I had to have a fair amount of speed to make it up, that was pretty unnerving, but my newer sled with firmer paddles I can just slowly walk it up the ramp no need to go fast and flop the sled onto the deck , just a nice slow controlled speed, I can even stop on the ramp and keep going. I'd suggest going slow at first and if you can't make it up add speed little by little until you do, most incidents are from people going way too fast or whisky throttling on their way up. Also, start with one sled in the middle of the deck and once you've done it a bunch of times and are feeling more comfortable try two sleds side by side.

 

[RyanM]

If there’s an option, upgrading the sway bars in your truck can help too.

 

[drew562]

Loading/unloading can be pretty sketchy at first but once you get used to it it's not too bad. My first sled was a Polaris SKS with a 2.4" track and the paddles were too soft to walk up the ramp and I had to have a fair amount of speed to make it up, that was pretty unnerving, but my newer sled with firmer paddles I can just slowly walk it up the ramp no need to go fast and flop the sled onto the deck , just a nice slow controlled speed, I can even stop on the ramp and keep going. I'd suggest going slow at first and if you can't make it up add speed little by little until you do, most incidents are from people going way too fast or whisky throttling on their way up. Also, start with one sled in the middle of the deck and once you've done it a bunch of times and are feeling more comfortable try two sleds side by side.

I never found decks tricky. Until I got an alpha. Backing off my drop n roll would hook the deck ramp. Also the exhaust shield. It would Stop me briefly and leave me balanced on a single rail. Not cool

 

[woody_tobius_jr]

If you’re not confident to begin with, put a winch kit on and winch them up, I put a winch kit on my Truck Boss after my sled wouldn’t start and I had to put a snatch block up on my deck and use my quad to winch it up onto my deck, so after that I put the winch kit on so I wouldn’t have to fart around like that again.
I’ve seen guys winch their sleds up when the parking lot was too icy to get any traction to load

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Zrock]

Not sure where you are planning on riding, but if you go on the backroads here and pull a trailer.. man is that sketchy. Nothing like holding up a line up of logging trucks when you are jack knifed on a narrow logging road because you missed the pullout. Way safer with a sled deck and they hold the road great and easy to turn around on those narrow roads. Not sure how far west of pg you are, but houston, telkwa and smithers maybe better than the torpy, mcbride , valmount. Yes your sleds will get muddy at times without covers on them, your truck will pack them no problem. I have seen a guy fall off the passenger side of the deck and break his hip trying to start his sled, loading and unloading might be scary for the first few tries. Not much tree riding west of town, more so east of town, more snow as well.

oh i could just hear the radio chatter as you were holding them up.. Probably not the most popular guy..LOL.. I thought logging roads in PG were like 3 lane highways and nothing like the goat roads in my area

 

[tmo1620]

If you get a sled deck without dogs on the ramp hooks your going straight to jail


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk