I've been looking at upgrading my spray tender truck from a single axle 3 ton cube van to a tandem cube van. The trouble is that I've recently heard that the DOT enforcement fellows are now getting sticky on the distance allowed (6 feet) from the pintle plate to the rear axle pivot. Anything longer than that and there's a fine and you have to unhook.  That makes for a REALLY short box overhang on a tandem because they measure from the center of the two axles. That's not much trouble on a dump truck, but for using the truck as a cube van that puts a huge amount of the loaded weight on the front axle, especially if if the truck isn't full behind the tandem center.

Is a 20k front axle enough to make a truck like this usuable at all with a 24' box? I'm tempted to think only partly loadable.  A 12 or 14k front like many cube vans would seem to be completely useless.  It'd be used for palletized heavy dry freight (probably 3500-3800lbs every 4 feet per pair of pallets) when not hauling water in the back, and it wouldn't be full all the time so there wouldn't be counterweight behind the axle pivot to take weight off the front.  Anybody have any experience with making something like this work?  I'm almost tempted to skip a cube van and get a daycab and customize a drop deck float with ramps on the back for the spray tractor and a storage box or something on the front to house my tools, chems, pump, etc but then it requires a different class of license for other people driving it.