Can anyone help me make sense of how to compute School bust towing capacity? The Bus we are squiring is a 90 passenger 40 ft Thomas saf-t-liner HDX flat nose diesel pusher. It is true that the pusher model can't tow? Secondly if towing IS possible, How much toung and gross weight can it tow?
The specs are below:
PASSENGER CAPACITY
Up to 90
WHEELBASE
277
GVWR
36,200 lbs.
:Thanx:
Papa "Rollin" Bone
P.S. Are there short buses that can tow 20,000 LBS?
Hey bud, yes a pusher can tow but some of this depends on if your engine is in a cradle or bolted directly to the frame. I don't know about the Thomas buses, sorry.
Mine is almost 40' pusher as well and I'm setting it up to tow 10k and I wouldn't advise going over that at all period. Using a 18' home made trailer from a class A RV I scrapped out to haul my E350 van (I do know the van weight is 5800 according to the scrap yard scale) on which I'm guessing total weight around 9k.
But 20k would be way overloaded for a bus. Mine is 36k GVWR as well.
10k might be too much but ahh.... I don't know what my bus weighs as it stands YET. But I'm working on welding up my own hitch, the recv is rated for 15k.
But anyways alot of the towing is going to depend on how thick the frame or cradle is at the rear.
What are you planning on towing that would be 20k?? Shucks that's alot.
There is threads about towing on here as well I've read a few, I'm sure there are people that can tell you way more about your situation than I can. I'm not sure how the rear is setup on a Thomas.
Lastly it's not all about pulling but stopping going down hill, too much weight anf you will burn your brakes up big time, I learned this the hard way years ago on a cab over flat bed when I took going down hill too fast, thank God I was able to hold my lane because the brakes were almost on fire and all I had trying to slow me down was the trans.
Atleast on my bus it has a retarder on the trans so I don't have to rely fully on the service brakes, if you are going to haul a heavy load you will really need to consider some braking for that trailer or whatever your pulling.
I'm trying to come up with a plan to do the same with mine (it's got a dully drive axle and I want to use air over hydro setup on it like some other trucks have for brakes that works along side the bus air brakes).... The trailer I'm making is setup for air ride though and I think that's kinda nifty.
Hope this helps a little, but for sure you can tow with a pusher but I can't tell you how much for sure....
Sorry I reread what you wrote and noticed you were asking about short buses towing 20k, well probably, they are atleast on a 1 ton truck frame, I've towed more than that with a 2000 F350 maybe not the safest but it did fine and doesn't weigh as much as a shorty does.
