How much can I haul?

Not being familiar with your tractor (LT or GT?), I can only say that a couple of young teens can push a 5000 lb load if it's on wheels on level ground. LTs have more weight for traction and more horsepower to apply.

Dirt weighs 90 lb per cubic foot. A garden wheel barrow has a 4 cu-ft tray, and you have a 10 cu-ft cart. I don't see a problem unless your tractor is a LT and your property has slopes over 5°.

Just a conservative comment and an outsiders observation,

Some cars have a 1,000 lb limit, some have 1,500. This is on smooth pavement.
Is your garden tractor greater than your car?

This is an important question.

The tranny on a garden tractor is made for ground engaging, but the limits are not well specified.

If you exceed the designed load capacity, you will be looking at accelerated wear and possible failure..

Wait for a few more responses before trusting that as long as it will move a trailer, you are not doing damage. Once broken, you will find it expensive and time consuming to fix.

Light loads are not a problem. 900 lbs may not be a problem.. But wait for confirmation.

:Tractor2:

I have a lawn tractor (actually two).

Garden tractors are quite an upgrade from mine.
1 family series of tractors go up another level.

Someone should have specs for your tranny..

is it a K70? a K66?

is it a Kanzaki® Tuff Torq® hydro/automatic transmission?

All three of the above are used by John Deere

Yours is a Troy Bilt...
Hydro.. Hydro 16

I am not sure what tranny it has and I've no idea on its capacity..

seems like it may very well handle a 10 Cu Ft load of dirt.. But, my lawn tractors would croak..

Mine have pulled 600 lbs, but not very far..

There's a big difference between a car pulling a 1000 lb trailer at 70 mph and a LT pulling the same trailer at a top speed of 5 mph.

By and large, it is difficult to hurt the final drive in LTs and GTs without adding a lot of weight specifically for traction. Without the added weight, the rear tires will spin if the load is too much. Lawn carts are mostly a balanced load and do not add much weight to the rear of the tractor to enhance traction.

With LT hydros, the hydraulic pressures are the critical measure for how much torque can be generated to start a load moving, and for preserving the life of the hydro. Depending on the gear reduction in the final drive, a Tuff Torq K46 entry level hydro found in many LTs is capable of 130 or 171 ft-lb of rear axle torque. This is more than adequate for a 17 cu-ft cart heaped with dirt on a level lawn for the few minutes required to move the cart from point to point without generating excess heat. The K92 hydro found in the large GTs has a 650 ft-lb axle torque capability sufficient to tow 25,000 lb aircraft on a level, hard surfaced, tarmac.

Earlier GTs had final drives rated for 1250 ft-lb of axle torque, and hydros capable of pushing past that by a goodly margin, if one was fool enough to add sufficient ballast. Some lessons we learn the hard way. :hide: