Sandbag weight alternatives

J

Jamesh Bond

Joined
Jan 14, 2007
Messages
1,760
I drive a 2wd Tacoma that is like a sled in the snow. Seriously its quite magical how little traction this thing has. Its ridiculous and annoying.

SICK AND TIRED of buying sandbags each year, trying to keep em above my tires all season, then throwing them away. Been trying to come up with alternative.

Im told tires or chains make a big difference. I believe this to be true somewhat. However, ive personally got around much better in lighter rear wheel drive cars with smoother tires than what i have. Seriously. This truck is possessed by Satan.

So, any creative weight or traction ideas desperately needed.
Ideally FREE or reusable.

Thx.
 
I drive a 2wd Tacoma that is like a sled in the snow. Seriously its quite magical how little traction this thing has. Its ridiculous and annoying.
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I don't understand how you could expect anything different from a 2WD pickup. :confused:

Because there's no weight over the rear end and because they're all rear-wheel-drive, there is no conceivably worse winter vehicle. Even a rear-wheel-drive car would be better, and there aren't many of those available nowadays (aside from roadsters like the Miata).

You can't even find new 2WD trucks here for sale, probably have to special order to even get one. And good luck ever trying to sell or trade in a 2WD pickup. :eek:
A 4DW in working condition will always be worth something; 2WD trucks seem to depreciate right down to $0.00.
 
Im aware of that. But i cant just go out and get something better. So i need to shine my turd.

It works ok with weight. Hence my post.
 
Keep in mind anything in the back of the pickup becomes a projectile in an accident. Imagine a heavy object in the bed of the truck during a head-on accident... Suddenly it's not in the bed any more, but crashing through the cab at 70 mph.

Aside from chains and good all-terrain tires, I don't have any good suggestions.

I sold a Lincoln Mark VIII to some friends. It had "traction control" but in icy or packed snow conditions it became a randomly-directional sled; it basically went whichever direction was sloped down regardless of the driver's steering efforts. The friends took that thing, put chains on it, and drove all over in the winter just as well as most AWD / 4WD cars! Of course chains aren't becoming of a Lincoln... :(
 
Get some better tires.

Weld some heavy metal plates to the bed above the driving wheels. You'll be removing usable space from the bed but at least you'll have traction. Any kind of unsecured load is a very bad idea.

Bite the bullet and get a more sensible vehicle for your intended driving conditions.
 
DB731 said:
Excuse my ignorance, but why are you throwing them away?
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That's a reasonable question. It's not like sand goes bad... :confused:

I'd need them as much in the summer as in the winter for the slick-as-snot mud after every rain.
 
So to summarize...

Jamesh Bond said:
Im told tires or chains make a big difference.
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That's absolutely true.

However, ive personally got around much better in lighter rear wheel drive cars with smoother tires than what i have.
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Of course you did. And you'd get even better traction in a modern front-wheel-drive car.

This truck is possessed by Satan.
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Satan, not quite. I drive a Tundra at work and it's a fine vehicle. Just drove it from New Mexico to Long Island and back in fact, loaded with gear. And I make occasional trips from New Mexico to the east coast with a loaded cargo trailer. I don't like it as well as my Ford, but overall the Tundra is fast, powerful, roomy, durable, and reliable. :thumbup:

The phenomenon you describe is entirely normal for a 2WD pickup, and not indicative on a supernatural infestation. :)
 
Oops, my mistake, I see you wrote Tacoma and not Tundra. My experience with the Tacoma trucks is limited but a friend had one. It was only 2WD but had some sort of special traction package (TRD?) with a locking rear end or some such. A poor substitute for 4WD, but a helluva lot better than the standard 2WD version.

My point, if your 2WD had the TRD (or whatever kit), you may not be fully utilizing the included features. Just something to check on.

Good luck.
 
Stop throwing the sandbags away. I always put them out behind the shed in the spring. Chains, studs, whatever, nothing will work unless you add the weight over the tires and that's that. The projectile thing is real too, which is why I always used sand. More likely to burst and spread out rather than come through the cab. I knew a guy who used to use a chunk of steel railroad rail and I told him how nuts that was, but he didn't get it.
 
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Nothing beats a 4 wheel drive .... but before I had one I had the same problem with 2 wheel drive . The 2 thing I used the most for weight was firewood or snow
 
Fill some 30 Liter Water containers and put them where you'd like the weight to be
 
Good idea Rappy. I might try that.

DB, sandbags disintegrate and fall apart after a season.

Bob, could you explain why a small RWD car does better than a truck with weight in it? The mechanics seem the same to me. As for my truck being possessed. Ive driven may 2WD pickups in the snow. This one is in a whole different class.
 
Let some air out of the back tires, they should squat some, put your counterweight on the bumper. I've seen guys put bench weights on the bumper by drilling holes in the bumper and using all thread rod. Down here, looks are not important. No snow, just mud.
 
Jamesh Bond said:
Good idea Rappy. I might try that.

DB, sandbags disintegrate and fall apart after a season.

Bob, could you explain why a small RWD car does better than a truck with weight in it? The mechanics seem the same to me.
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I'm no engineer, but it seems that the long wheelbase of the pickup means that less weight is on the rear end. Funny thing, my parents had a 75-ish Ford that if you parked it in the yard to wash, you had to wait for the grass to dry to move it afterwards.

My small car is rear-wheel drive, a Honda S2000. And it probably won't do better than a 2wd pickup; it's super lightweight with wide tires (think skis), it's too 'twitchy', and it has no traction control at all. The Miatas seem to do better, even though both the Miata and S have a near 50-50 weight distribution.

Some 2wd cars achieve reasonable traction by transferring weight to the rear and with advanced computer-controlled wheel braking systems. The Lincoln LS comes to mind. It achieved a near 50-50 weight distribution by doing things like moving the battery to the trunk.

As for my truck being possessed. Ive driven may 2WD pickups in the snow. This one is in a whole different class.
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Tire tread, tire width, computer programming, shift points, overall weight, differential design... all sorts of possible reasons. I even suspect a link between traction and a vehicle's length-width ratio.
Among Toyotas, for example, there's a huge difference between the pickups with the TRD package and those without.

On the farm there was an old 1970-ish Chevy pickup with only 2WD. It had mud tires on the rear, similar to tractor tires, and it could go almost anywhere my 4WD truck could. Of course it did a lot more tire spinning and mud slinging and with less control, but it managed.
 
The sand bags I bought from the local big box store were in long plastic web/weave/mesh type tubes. They were cheap and lasted me 5+ years easy.

BTW, put too much weight on the bumper and you will lift and lose grip on the the front wheels. Keep it over the rear wheels only.
 
I've got a 2002 Tacoma, and the few snow days we get here in Maryland is the only time I have to be careful. Just before the first snow, I'll put two 50 pound sand bags behind each wheel well, and the change is unreal. The 200 pounds makes all the difference in the world. With good all weather radials, I can go all the places my better halfs front wheel drive car can go. The 10 or 12 bucks for the sand bags is a cheap price to pay. Come March, I use the sand bags for landscaping projects. If I have some other project in mind, like a gravel walkway out back, I'll get 50 pound bags of gravel to be used in the spring/summer. Sand, gravel in various colors, all can be used. Last spring I made a gravel and flagstone patio out back.

For a couple winters, I had the woven bags of sand from Lowes I think, sold for just that purpose. In march, I just stacked them along the inside wall of the garage to be stored for the next winter. These lasted for 4 or 5 years.

The low cost of the sand bags is more than worth it to me, rather than anything more permanent. Once spring is here, I like the fact that the unloaded 2wd Tacoma gets 26 or 27 miles per gallon. For the couple snow days we get in Maryland, I don't need 4wd.

If you have an open bed with no cap, just shovel in a bunch of snow to fill it. That will give you plenty of weight in the back. When the weather clears, just shovel it out.
 
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