Chance Bownds Ropes a Reliable Ride Across Texas
4/27/2017
When you live the rodeo lifestyle, you have to be prepared to spend every other weekend on the road during the season, which means putting upwards of 40,000 miles on your truck and trailer.
Chance Bownds, a team roper from Texas, knows this lifestyle well. If you were to ask, he’ll tell you that he’s been roping since before he could even walk, raised by a team roping father and a barrel racing mother. The sport has been in the family for a long time.
When Chance took up roping, there really was no looking back. From the junior rodeo in high school to signing to his college’s rodeo team, and he’s still roping in 2017, where he’s found himself a full-time roper, getting ready to start his next season.
With a full-time commitment to the sport, there’s a necessity to have all the right tools to succeed. For Chance, that’s a 2016 RAM 3500 and a 42-foot, 19,000 pound horse trailer, complete with living quarters, a slide out, and a 50 gallon holding tank. The two together were a huge investment, but Chance’s RAM just couldn’t seem to handle the weight it put on the rear suspension.
Even with the stout factory suspension, he experiences lots of problems while towing. He found his tires wearing unevenly in the front, and was often white-knuckling as the truck jerked and bottomed out under the weight of the trailer. The whole setup just wasn’t stable and was consistently rough, even on the highway.
Chance started looking for ways to make it less stressful to get between shows, looking for a solution less expensive than upgrading his truck to a $100,000 mini semi. A few of his friends in the rodeo circuit pointed him in the direction of air helper springs, something that they use on their own trucks.
