As a truck owner, you may be debating whether to lift your truck. Doing so can provide ample benefits, including greater ground clearance and better visibility. However, you may wonder if lifting your truck can affect its ability to tow. Below, you can learn whether lifted trucks can tow and review other helpful information about towing with a lifted truck.Â
What Are the Two Different Types of Truck Lifts?
When you hear the phrase "truck lift," you may think of it as simply raising your truck off the ground. However, there are two types of truck lifts. The first type is a body lift, which is when you lift the vehicle's body away from the frame. A body lift doesn't allow for much vertical gain in height, as it's limited to anywhere between two and five inches. Implementing a body lift is effective if you want to equip your truck with larger tires, but it doesn't create any significant ground clearance.
A suspension lift is more complicated. This method involves lifting your truck's suspension off the ground. They can provide much more ground clearance because you can lift your truck's suspension components off the ground as high as nine to 12 inches.
How Do You Lift a Truck?
A truck owner can lift their vehicle themselves using a lift kit. It usually only takes a couple of hours if you know what you're doing, and you can follow the instructions in your lift kit for guidance. There are lift kits available for both suspension lifts and body lifts, so you can choose the one you'd like. If you aren't comfortable with the idea of installing a lift kit yourself, you can take your vehicle to the service center at Gibson Truck WorldÂ
Can Lifted Trucks Tow Weight?
While lifted trucks can technically tow weight, it's not advisable. When you lift your truck, it can drastically alter its handling and driving performance. When you tow weight with a lifted truck, the truck may drive unstably or sag in certain areas. It may also have a lower payload and towing capacity, and it can even get lower gas mileage due to poor aerodynamics at a higher height.
If you want to lift your truck and plan to tow heavy items with it in the future, you'll be better off choosing a body lift instead of a suspension lift. Because a body lift only involves lifting the truck's body away from the frame, this change won't affect the vehicle's handling and driving performance as significantly.
Because a truck's suspension is crucial for safe towing, a suspension lift isn't ideal if you want to use your truck for regular towing. In a lifted truck, the springs and shocks have to travel farther distances. These components are often much softer so they can allow the tires to reach the road or path below. When you attach weight to tow at the back of the truck, the back of the truck will likely sag. This sinking of the bed disrupts the truck's entire balance, which renders the truck's maximum towing capacity irrelevant.
Can You Improve Towing Safety on a Truck With a Suspension Lift?
Most experts recommend that you get a body lift for your truck if you want to tow items with it regularly. However, there are a couple of precautions you can take to make it safer to tow with a truck that has a suspension lift. For example, you can add a drop hitch to the back of your truck. A drop hitch is a mechanism that lowers your vehicle hitch's ball joint closer to the ground. When you're shopping for a drop hitch, consider getting one with multiple adjustable heights so you can find the appropriate height.
Another solution to consider implementing is adding air suspension to your truck. When you add air suspension to your truck, you put balloon-like airbags in place of your vehicle's old back shocks. This change can minimize some stability and sagging issues that a heightened truck may otherwise present.
Note that while these solutions can be effective, they aren't perfect. It's always safest to tow items with a non-lifted truck. Alternatively, you can tow items with a truck that has only experienced a body lift rather than a suspension lift.
Why Do Truck Owners Lift Their Trucks?
Even though a lifted truck doesn't allow for ideal towing conditions, some truck owners may still choose to lift their vehicles anyway. This is because lifting your truck provides benefits like:
Increased Visibility on the Road
Some truck owners lift their vehicles to get better visibility. Lifting their trucks lets them sit up higher so they can see other cars in front of them and the road in its entirety more clearly.
More Ground Clearance
Lifting a truck lets you get more ground clearance. This is ideal if you plan to do off-roading. Your truck will be able to go over branches, trunks, and other debris on the ground more easily without causing damage to its suspension parts.
Bigger Wheels and Tires
You can lift your truck to make room for bigger wheels and tires. Some truck owners may install bigger wheels and tires to get more traction on wet, slippery roads.
How Does Tire Size Affect Towing Capacity?
If you lift your truck to make room for bigger tires, be aware of how it'll affect towing capacity. Bigger tires transfer less torque, so they can cause a decrease in the truck's power-producing capabilities. As a result, you may notice that your truck can't pull as much weight as it would with its standard tires.
Now that you know more about lifting trucks and towing, you may want to find a non-lifted truck to purchase for yourself. You can head to our dealership at Gibson Truck World and browse our used truck inventory. If you don't plan on towing much and want the other benefits of a lifted truck, you can browse the lifted trucks that we currently have available.
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