Pulling Power: 7 of Some of the biggest things vehicles have ever towed

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Trucks are intended to be workhorses, and auto companies love to show them working hard. Sometimes, that can include going to ridiculous lengths, like having them tow the biggest and heaviest things they can possibly find to pull.

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From planes to trains, and a few things in between, auto companies have towed some pretty impressive stuff — and in some cases, not just with pickup trucks, but with SUVs as well.

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Pulling Power: 7 of Some of the biggest things vehicles have ever towed Back to video

We’ve rounded up some of the bigger items that have been hooked to vehicles over the years for the sake of advertising attention.

These are stock vehicles, without any capacity modifications, and which might lead you to wonder why there’s a towing capacity limit on your truck and it’s nowhere near as much as these units are pulling. That’s because there’s more to it, of course.

Just about any vehicle can pull more than its rated maximum — but it can’t stop it, nor can it properly steer when it’s overloaded. So stick within your vehicle’s limits, and leave these “stunt pulls” to the pros.

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Electric Ford F-150 vs a Train

Back in 2019, when the Ford F-150 Lightning all-electric pickup truck was still under development, the company hooked up a prototype to a train. Linda Zhang, chief engineer of the F-150 program, gathered a group of truck owners at a rail yard, where a train made of up of 10 double-decker freight cars was waiting. There were also 42 trucks on hand, representing 42 years of the F-150 being the best-selling truck in the U.S.

The electric truck first pulled the freight cars, weighing some 1 million pounds, for 1,000 feet. The 42 trucks were then loaded onto the train, bringing it to 1.25 million pounds, and the battery-powered F-150 pulled it all again.

Toyota Tundra vs Endeavour

The U.S. space shuttle Endeavour launched for the first time in 1992, the last of NASA’s five orbiter shuttles, and completed 25 missions until its final space flight in May 2011. In 2014, it was destined to become an exhibit at the California Science Center, but first it had to get there — and flying it there was not an option.

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It rode on a NASA transporter most of the way, but a lighter-duty solution had to be used to get it across the Manchester Boulevard Bridge, which spans Highway 405 in Los Angeles. Toyota brought a Tundra to the job, hooking to the shuttle. Including the dollies under the shuttle, the load weighed more than 132,000 kilograms. The truck was piloted by Matt McBride, a precision driver who’d worked on projects such as a Transformers movie, and his passenger was astronaut Garrett Reisman, who’d ridden in 2008 in Endeavour on his first space flight. Toyota had a partnership with the Science Center, and the Tundra went on display as well.

Land Rover Discovery vs Truck Train

Across Australia’s wide-open spaces, freight companies tow “road trains,” where one big truck pulls a succession of trailers. In 2017, Land Rover put a diesel-powered Discovery in front of one that weighed 110 tonnes, and pulled it for 16 kilometres on a closed stretch of highway. Road trains are normally limited to four trailers, but Land Rover got permission to pull seven of them, along with the truck, which was used to operate the hydraulic brakes on the trailers.

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The year prior, a diesel-powered Discovery Sport had been hooked to a real train in Switzerland, pulling three train cars weighing more than 100 tonnes on a track, after being fitted with rail wheels. It was in homage to the original Discovery’s launch in 1989, which included the vehicle pulling a train on a bridge across the Rhine River.

Truck vs Flag, Part 1

It appears there’s a Guinness World Record for just about everything, and in 2016, Chevrolet set one for the World’s Largest Flag Pulled by a Moving Vehicle. It was to commemorate the upcoming 2017 Silverado Heavy-Duty with a new 6.6L V8 diesel engine.

The flag measured nearly 12 by 24 metres, and the truck had to pull it for at least 100 metres without it touching the ground. The feat was performed over four laps of the Texas Motor Speedway. Under Guinness rules, a team of 20 people held the flag up at the start so it wouldn’t touch the pavement before the truck’s momentum held it aloft.

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Truck vs Flag, Part 2

Chevrolet’s record-setting flag started a flap with Ford, and less than two months later, Ford got an even bigger version of the Stars and Stripes, hooked it to an all-new F-450 Super Duty, and did four laps at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Ford’s flag measured 13.7 metres by 28 metres, and travelled 109 metres without touching the ground. That was enough to wrest the short-lived Guinness Record away from GM.

Porsche Cayenne vs Airbus

GM and Ford weren’t the only ones to fight over Guinness World Records. Porsche’s subsidiary in Great Britain was not impressed when a Nissan Patrol, which it considered to be a competitor, set the record for Heaviest Aircraft Pulled By Any Production Vehicle when it towed a cargo plane weighing 170.9 tons in the United Arab Emirates in 2013, beating the previous record of 155 tons set by a Volkswagen Touareg in 2006.

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So in 2017, Porsche called up Air France, which offered an Airbus A380 weighing 285 tons, and hooked a stock Cayenne to the front of it. As an official from Guinness watched, the Porsche pulled the Airbus 30.48 metres (100 feet) to swap the record set by a Japanese sport-ute back to a German vehicle.

Tesla vs Qantas

Since everyone else was doing it, Tesla decided to get on board in 2018, when it went after the Guinness World Record for Heaviest Tow by an Electric Production Passenger Vehicle with a Model X P100D.

Qantas offered a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, and the stunt took place in Melbourne, Australia. The Model X was rated at 5,000 lbs towing capacity, and the plane weighed 286,600 lbs, but the Tesla still managed to pull it for 987 feet to set the record.

All of these truck/SUV tows are pretty impressive, but here’s something to remember: Numerous men and women have set records of their own pulling planes from a standing stop, including Canada’s own Kevin Fast, a Lutheran minister from Cobourg, Ontario who nabbed a Guinness World Record for pulling a 188.83-tonne plane at a Canadian Forces base in 2009.