Add axle to trailer?

I have a 40ft gooseneck flatbed with 3 I-beam main runners going the whole length and 1/4" plate for a floor. The thing is just heavy.

How hard would it be to add a 3rd 12k axle to it? Just welt on some brackets and bolt up? Would having triple duel axles on it cause the bad tire scrubbing like in the single wheels,

That still won't change the legal gvw on the sticker unfortunately.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 4

Crap, I didn't think of that... Is there a place to buy those trailer VIN plates that you can write on with an engraver? Might just have a trooper stamp numbers on it and put my own VIN plate on.

Like stated you could add it, its legally not going to change the weight rating on the trailer. Unless you are having tire issues or something then there really isn't a need for it. A third axle will make it harder to turn with, as well as another axle to have maintained tires ect ect. Plus that might throw a red flag to the d.o.t that you are hauling that heavy with a one ton (just making an assumption)

Not having tire trouble, just overloading the axles by 10k on a regular basis. Might just have to look into something else

turning/backing/maneuvering a trailer with 3 tandem axles would be a royal pain in the arse

what are you towing it with?

Hay, trees, scrap steel, tractors.

Have you scaled just the rear axles of the trailer when you are loaded to see if you are actually overloading the axles? The truck rear axle will carry a percentage of the gross weight, but you don't actually know until you scale the trailer by itself. I really doubt that you are overloading each axle by 10,000 lbs. I would say you could go 10,000 lbs over the gvw of the trailer, and still not overload the axles if the load was distributed.

I haven't, need to do that. I had it hooked on the Topkick the other day and was around 57k for the whole rig. Didn't have any problems but figured it was borderline.

How much do you figure the topkick weighs empty, 12k?

The next time you are loaded that heavy, I would scale the truck first, then pull the trailer onto the scales and get a combined weight, then pull the truck off and leave the trailer on to see where the weight is. You are probably right though. You are probably way overloaded on those axles if you are weighing 57,000 lbs. I guess I assumed you were pulling this trailer with a one ton truck, and there was no way you were pulling that much weight.