Dog Weight Pull Records: What Dog Can Pull the Most Weight?
This is a records ledger, not a listicle. Every figure below carries its federation, its surface, its date and a working link, or an explicit label saying we could not verify it. That includes the famous ones, the ones that turn out not to exist, and our own.
The short answer
The heaviest weight a single dog has ever pulled on record is 22,039 lb, on rails, and two Boerboel littermates each moved it on the same day. CR’s Sun WuKong (164 lb, 23.22 sec) and CR’s Mr. Wednesday (186 lb, 25.03 sec) did it at a UPF-sanctioned pull in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania on 9 May 2026, and both figures are on the federation’s own results sheet and in each dog’s official profile.[3, 4, 5] Nobody certifies an all-time record in this sport, so that is the heaviest documented pull rather than a ratified one.
There is no Guinness World Record for the strongest dog. Guinness publishes exactly one dog-pulling record and it is a team category: 145,302 lb by 210 sled dogs at Whitehorse, Yukon in 2000, about 692 lb per dog.[12] The single-dog entries it once printed were retired decades ago.
Everything else you will read on this subject is a claim, and claims here are graded. The ledger below takes every circulating record figure and marks it traceable to a published result sheet, traceable only to secondary repetition, or could not be verified. Three of the most-quoted numbers in the sport land in the bottom two rows.
If your question is which breed is strongest rather than which dog holds which record, that is a different question with more than one right answer, and we answer it separately in which dog breed is strongest, by each measure.
The Guinness record that does not exist
Search for the strongest dog in the world and you will land, within a click or two, on a version of this sentence: the Guinness Book of World Records strongest dog in the world was a Newfoundland who pulled 5,045 and a half pounds at a body weight of 97 lb. It opens one of the most-linked articles on the query and travels downstream from there into dozens of rewrites.[15]
There is no such Guinness record. Guinness World Records publishes one dog-pulling title, and it is a team category: heaviest weight pulled by a dog sled team, 145,302 lb (65,910 kg) by 210 dogs at Whitehorse, Yukon on 22 October 2000.[12] Divide it out and that is roughly 692 lb per dog, which is a perfectly ordinary snow pull for one dog. No single-dog weight-pull title appears in the Guinness database at all, under any wording.
So where does the Newfoundland come from?
It is not invented, which is the interesting part. The figure traces to a retired printed Guinness entry with a completely different title. In the 1981 through 1989 editions, under most proportionate weight hauled, Guinness listed “Barbara-Allen’s Dark Hans,” a 97 lb Newfoundland, who pulled 5,045 1/2 lb (2,289 kg), printed alongside the qualifier 52 lb per lb of body weight. A children’s reference book of the period places the pull at the 1979 annual Bothell, Washington weight pull, the same event that produced the old St Bernard record.[14]
So the number survived and the category did not. What was published as a pound-for-pound ratio record has been rewritten as a strongest dog in the world record, which is the one thing it never was: 5,045 lb would not have been the heaviest load of its own decade, since Guinness printed a 6,400 lb 8 oz St Bernard pull in the same books.[13]
What we can say, and what we cannot. We can say Guinness lists no single-dog weight-pull record today, because we checked the database. We can say the 5,045 1/2 lb figure and the 97 lb Newfoundland are genuine printed Guinness content, because the scanned editions are full-text searchable and we read them. What we cannot say is that any specific writer made it up, or that the pull did not happen. The honest verdict is narrower and more useful: the number is real, the title attached to it is not, and no current Guinness record supports the claim.
One footnote worth keeping, because it is the sort of thing this page exists for. Newfoundlands do pull, and they are documented doing it: on the same 2015 W3PO rails sheet that produced the 16,146 lb figure, a 119 lb Newfoundland named Brody moved 6,354 lb and a 130 lb Newfoundland named Micky moved 9,074 lb.[7] Those are real results with a surface and a date. They just are not a Guinness record.
The claims ledger, adjudicated
Weight pull is a small sport with a large mythology, and most of the numbers people quote have been copied so many times that the original has been lost. So every claim we could find gets a row, and every row gets a verification status with exactly three permitted values. Nothing is printed here without one.
- Traceable to a published result sheet. A sanctioning body’s own event sheet or dog profile records it, with body weight and date.
- Traceable only to secondary repetition. A real, datable source exists (a newspaper, a magazine, a printed reference book), but no sanctioning body’s sheet does.
- Could not be verified. We looked and found no primary or dated secondary source, only repetition.
The point of a scale like this is that it has to apply to us too. Our own row is the first one, graded on the same three values, and the disclosure of our interest is at the bottom of this page rather than in the small print.
| Claim | Figure | Federation, surface, date | Verification status |
|---|---|---|---|
| CR's Sun WuKong and CR's Mr. Wednesday (Boerboels, 164 lb and 186 lb) | 22,039 lb each | UPF, rails, Pittsburg PA, 9 May 2026 | Traceable to a published result sheet |
| Moose (American Pit Bull Terrier, 104 lb) | 16,146 lb | W3PO, rails, Monroe MI, 18 April 2015 | Traceable to a published result sheet |
| Tank (Mastiff, 187 lb) | 6,075 lb | IWPA, wheels on carpet over asphalt, Grand Rapids MI, 1 May 2022 | Traceable to a published result sheet |
| Mafia (American Pit Bull Terrier, 75 lb), an 'AAPBA Most Weight Pulled Record' | 13,042 lb | Organization stated as AAPBA. No surface, venue or date given anywhere. | Could not be verified |
| Delbert (giant Alaskan Malamute, 150 lb) | 5,400 lb | Mid-Atlantic Weight Pullers, Epps Farm Supply, Suffolk VA, reported March 2017 | Traceable only to secondary repetition |
| Gaitor Red, 'the official dog pull record' | 5,022 lb | Stated year 1995. No organization, surface, breed or body weight given. | Could not be verified |
| Banzai, registered Duvall's Sureshot Kamakazi (American Staffordshire Terrier, 43 lb) | 3,900 lb, 90.7x body weight | No surface, sanctioning body, venue or date stated | Traceable only to secondary repetition |
| Philo (Samoyed, 5 years old, body weight not stated) | more than 1,800 lb, personal best reported as 3,500 lb | Cart of cinder blocks, Doggie U K-9 Academy, Bayshore NY | Traceable only to secondary repetition |
| Ryettes Brandy Bear (St Bernard, 176 lb), the old Guinness 'greatest load shifted by a dog' | 6,400 lb 8 oz | Four-wheeled carrier on cement, Bothell WA, 21 July 1978 | Traceable only to secondary repetition |
| 'The Guinness Book of World Records strongest dog in the world, a Newfoundland' at 97 lb body weight | 5,045 1/2 lb | Circulated with no year, venue or surface attached | Traceable only to secondary repetition |
Ledger last updated 1 August 2026, when every link in it was re-checked. We maintain this table: if a federation publishes a heavier documented pull, or a claim currently marked unverified turns up on a real result sheet, the row changes and the date above moves with it. Corrections are welcome through our contact page, and a result sheet will always beat an argument.
The working, claim by claim
CR's Sun WuKong and CR's Mr. Wednesday (Boerboels, 164 lb and 186 lb)
Traceable to a published result sheet22,039 lb each
UPF, rails, Pittsburg PA, 9 May 2026
On the federation's own event sheet and on both dogs' official UPF profiles, with body weight, time and percentage. Handler listed as Cold River Boerboels. This is our own interest: see the disclosure below.[3, 4, 5]
Moose (American Pit Bull Terrier, 104 lb)
Traceable to a published result sheet16,146 lb
W3PO, rails, Monroe MI, 18 April 2015
On W3PO's official sheet for pull 15-10, with time (25.84 sec) and percentage (155.25). The original host is offline; the sheet survives only in the Internet Archive, which we read on 1 August 2026.[7]
Tank (Mastiff, 187 lb)
Traceable to a published result sheet6,075 lb
IWPA, wheels on carpet over asphalt, Grand Rapids MI, 1 May 2022
The heaviest figure in IWPA's own Record Holders tables, and confirmed on the underlying championship result sheet: 15.34 sec, 32.49 times body weight, Unlimited Class. The rare case where a federation itself calls a number a record.[9, 10]
Mafia (American Pit Bull Terrier, 75 lb), an 'AAPBA Most Weight Pulled Record'
Could not be verified13,042 lb
Organization stated as AAPBA. No surface, venue or date given anywhere.
We can find no AAPBA website, results database or result sheet. The only public trace of the figure is one 2009 forum reply prefaced 'Not sure how current', repeated since without a source. The same reply credits a second dog, Big Boi, with the identical 13,042 lb.[21]
Delbert (giant Alaskan Malamute, 150 lb)
Traceable only to secondary repetition5,400 lb
Mid-Atlantic Weight Pullers, Epps Farm Supply, Suffolk VA, reported March 2017
A local newspaper report, described there as a track record, with no sanctioning body attached to the number. Delbert is a real IWPA dog, but IWPA's own record tables credit him with 4,475 lb (wheels/artificial, Spokane WA 2017) and 3,800 lb (wheels/natural, Estes Park CO 2019).[19, 9]
Gaitor Red, 'the official dog pull record'
Could not be verified5,022 lb
Stated year 1995. No organization, surface, breed or body weight given.
One sentence in a 2003 local newspaper feature, with no source. The name appears nowhere in IWPA's record tables. We note without asserting a link that IWPA's Unlimited wheels/artificial record for 1995 is 5,002 lb by Sly, an English Mastiff, at St. Louis MO.[20, 9]
Banzai, registered Duvall's Sureshot Kamakazi (American Staffordshire Terrier, 43 lb)
Traceable only to secondary repetition3,900 lb, 90.7x body weight
No surface, sanctioning body, venue or date stated
Reported in Whole Dog Journal as a personal best. It is a credible and widely quoted ratio figure, but it is an owner-reported number in a magazine article, not a result sheet, and the missing surface is the piece that would make it comparable to anything else here.[18]
Philo (Samoyed, 5 years old, body weight not stated)
Traceable only to secondary repetitionmore than 1,800 lb, personal best reported as 3,500 lb
Cart of cinder blocks, Doggie U K-9 Academy, Bayshore NY
An AKC feature article describing an event Philo won. No body weight, no sanctioning body, no date, and no result sheet, so it cannot be placed on any ladder. Quoted here because it is one of the most-repeated 'strongest dog' anecdotes on the web.[17]
Ryettes Brandy Bear (St Bernard, 176 lb), the old Guinness 'greatest load shifted by a dog'
Traceable only to secondary repetition6,400 lb 8 oz
Four-wheeled carrier on cement, Bothell WA, 21 July 1978
Real, printed, and correctly dated in scanned Guinness editions, which are a compilation rather than a result sheet. No sanctioning body's sheet survives. Guinness no longer publishes this record. The commonly repeated version misnames the dog 'Ryan' and puts it on snow; it was wheels on concrete.[13]
'The Guinness Book of World Records strongest dog in the world, a Newfoundland' at 97 lb body weight
Traceable only to secondary repetition5,045 1/2 lb
Circulated with no year, venue or surface attached
The figure is real but the title is not. It traces to a retired printed Guinness entry called 'most proportionate weight hauled': Barbara-Allen's Dark Hans, a 97 lb Newfoundland, 5,045 1/2 lb (2,289 kg), stated as 52 lb per lb of body weight, at the 1979 annual Bothell WA pull. That is a ratio record, not a heaviest-load record, and Guinness publishes no such category today.[14, 15, 12]
Why no one can name one record
Weight-pull numbers depend on the pulling surface and each organization’s rules, so they are not one leaderboard. A sled on snow fights the most friction and yields the lowest weights; wheels on dirt, grass or carpet sit in the middle; a low-friction rail cart allows by far the highest numbers. The UKC’s own rules make the gap explicit before a dog ever competes: a basic qualifying pull asks for 10 times body weight on rails, 8 times on wheels and 3 times on snow.[1]
On top of that, different bodies keep separate records on separate surfaces and do not ratify each other. Only IWPA publishes something it calls a record, and only for its own Championships.[2, 9] So the honest framing is never “the record is X,” it is “the record in this organization, on this surface, on this date, is X.”
Why this page exists at all
Because nothing else does the job. Wikipedia’s Weight pulling article lists fourteen bullet points of sanctioning bodies and clubs and then stops: it has no records section, and the word record does not appear anywhere in its body text. It also never mentions the Unified Pulling Federation and never mentions Boerboels.[16] The federations themselves publish result sheets, not records pages. IWPA is the single exception, and its tables cover only IWPA.[9]
As far as we can tell, no maintained cross-federation single-dog records table exists anywhere. This is one, and the dated header above is our commitment to keeping it that way.
Rails, wheels, snow: the whole ladder
Nearly every confusing claim in this subject dissolves once you sort figures by surface. On rails, a steel-wheeled cart runs on steel rail, the lowest-friction setup in the sport, and the numbers run into five figures: 22,039 lb (UPF), 16,146 lb (W3PO), 14,445 lb (APA).[3, 7, 8] On wheels, a tired cart on carpet, dirt or grass, the heaviest figure we found anywhere is 6,250 lb, by a 200 lb Mastiff named Noble in March 2013.[9, 25] On snow, a runnered sled fights both drag and breakaway stiction, and the ceiling anywhere is about 3,380 lb.[25]
The cleanest demonstration is a weekend where the surface changed and the dogs did not. At the 2022 IWPA Championships in Grand Rapids, the same entrants pulled snow on the Saturday and wheels on carpet on the Sunday.[10, 11]
| Dog | Body weight | Snow, 30 Apr 2022 | Wheels on carpet, 1 May 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tank, Mastiff | 187 lb | 2,000 lb (10.7x) | 6,075 lb (32.5x) |
| Dezzy, Greater Swiss Mountain Dog | 104 lb | 1,370 lb (13.2x) | 4,475 lb (43.0x) |
| A.I.D.E.W., American Pit Bull Terrier | 54 lb | 1,597 lb (29.6x) | 3,115 lb (57.7x) |
| Rocky, Newfoundland | 136 lb | 1,370 lb (10.1x) | 2,475 lb (18.2x) |
Transcribed from IWPA’s own result sheets for pulls 76 and 77 of the 2021/22 season. Multiples are the percentage column IWPA prints on the sheet.[10, 11]
Tank tripled his own snow number the next morning without getting any stronger overnight. That gap is friction. It is also why the UKC’s qualifying minimums differ by surface, and why any article that ranks a snow figure against a rails figure is not measuring dogs at all.[1]
One thing surface does not do is put an asterisk on the top of the ledger. The three heaviest federation figures in the sport, 22,039 lb, 16,146 lb and 14,445 lb, were all set on rails.[3, 7, 8] That is a like-for-like comparison, and the Boerboel figure wins it by 5,893 lb, about 36 percent. Surface explains why a 6,075 lb wheels record is not competing with a rails number. It does not explain away a rails result that beat other rails results.
How much weight can a dog pull?
Most people arriving at record figures actually want an everyday anchor, so here is one, with the surface attached, because a multiple without a surface is meaningless.
The best available evidence is that 2022 IWPA championship weekend, because it holds the dogs constant and changes only the ground. Across 42 completed pulls on snow, the median dog moved about 10 times its own body weight (range 2.6 to 29.6 times). Across 49 completed pulls on wheels over carpet the next day, the median dog moved about 25 times its own body weight (range 7.2 to 57.7 times).[10, 11] These are conditioned competition dogs at a national final, not the family pet, and they are the highest-quality everyday numbers in the sport.
The UKC sets the entry bar lower and by surface, which is a useful floor: a basic qualifying pull is 3 times body weight on snow, 8 times on wheels, 10 times on rails.[1] At the far end, rail pulls run far higher again. At the UPF rail event in the ledger above, every dog that finished was between 65 and 483 times its own body weight.[3]
About “a fit dog can pull three times its body weight”
That line is everywhere, and it is usually printed with no surface at all.[15] Once you attach a surface it becomes legible: 3 times body weight is almost exactly the UKC’s minimum qualifying pull on snow, the hardest surface in the sport.[1] It is a floor for a titled dog on the worst possible ground, not a ceiling for a dog in general.
On wheels, the surface most pet owners would picture, the same rulebook’s floor is more than twice as high at 8 times body weight, and real championship dogs cleared 25 times on median.[1, 10] So the popular figure is not wrong so much as missing the one word that makes it mean anything.
What this section is not: training advice. If you want to know how to start a dog in the sport, how old it should be, how a harness should fit or whether the sport is humane, that is all on our Boerboel weight-pull page, not here.
Every federation’s heaviest, side by side
We went and checked. Every organization that publishes weight-pull results was swept and its own heaviest published single-dog figure pulled out, roughly 100,000 individual result rows in total. No federation on this list publishes an all-time records page, so with one exception these are the heaviest figures in each body’s own results, not records any of them claim. Read the surface column before you compare any two rows.
| Organization | Heaviest | Dog | Surface | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UPF (Unified Pulling Federation) | 22,039 lb | CR's Sun WuKong (164 lb) and CR's Mr. Wednesday (186 lb), Boerboels, tied, 5/9/2026 | Rails | Published result |
| W3PO (World Wide Weight Pull Organization) | 16,146 lb | Moose, American Pit Bull Terrier, 104 lb, 4/18/2015 | Rails | Published result (archived; host offline) |
| APA (American Pulling Alliance) | 14,445 lb | Dezzy, Greater Swiss Mountain Dog, 100 lb, 5/27/2023 | Rails, carpet track | Published result |
| EWPL (European Weightpull League) | 9,006 lb (4,085 kg) | Zazza, Boerboel, 132 lb, 7/21/2019 | Not recorded by EWPL | Published result, surface unknown |
| EWPAS (European Weight Pulling All Stars) | 7,937 lb (3,600 kg) | Sigurd, American Bulldog, 80 lb, 10/23/2021 | Not recorded | Published result, surface unknown |
| Historical Guinness Book entry | 6,400 lb 8 oz | Ryettes Brandy Bear, St Bernard, 176 lb, 7/21/1978 | Wheeled carrier on cement | Printed entry, no longer published |
| IWPA (International Weight Pull Association) | 6,075 lb record (6,250 lb heaviest result) | Tank, Mastiff, 187 lb, 5/1/2022 (Noble, Mastiff, 200 lb, 3/9/2013) | Wheels on carpet. IWPA runs no rails. | Federation record |
| Iron Dog Sports Association | 5,456 lb | Hater (APBT, 39 lb) and Aset (Presa Canario, 103 lb), tied, 5/2/2026 | Not stated on the sheet | Published result, surface unknown |
| UKC (United Kennel Club) | Not derivable | UKC publishes only multiples of body weight, never pounds | Rails, wheels and snow all sanctioned | No poundage published |
| Guinness World Records | No single-dog title exists | Only a dog sled TEAM record: 145,302 lb by 210 dogs, Whitehorse YT, 10/22/2000 | Sled | Team category, not a single-dog record |
| ADBA, NAWA, ABA, AAPBA | Unknown | No public results database exists for any of the four | Various | No results published |
Only IWPA’s 6,075 lb is a figure a federation itself calls a record, and IWPA sets records only at its Championships, which is why a heavier 6,250 lb regional result sits above it in its own results archive.[9, 10, 25] Everything else here is the heaviest figure in that organization’s published results.[3, 7, 8] The W3PO row is the fragile one: that federation’s website no longer answers, so its sheet survives only in the Internet Archive.[7]
Numbers that look bigger, and why they are not
Five rows in the sport’s public data display figures above 22,039 lb. All five are in APA’s raw archive, and every one collapses on inspection: they are single-extra-digit typing errors, disproved by the percentage APA itself prints on the same row.[8] The 46,785 lb entry carries a percentage of 50.81, which for a 92 lb dog works out to roughly 4,675 lb, and that dog is listed second, behind a 5,575 lb winner. A 32,758 lb entry resolves the same way (29.24 x 112 lb = 3,275 exactly). A naive scrape of the sport’s results will tell you these are real pulls. They are not.
The only genuine figure anywhere above 22,039 lb is the Guinness dog sled TEAM record, 145,302 lb by 210 dogs in Whitehorse, Yukon in 2000.[12] That is roughly 692 lb per dog, and a completely different category from one dog on a cart.
The old Guinness record, and the version everyone repeats
Guinness lists no single-dog weight-pull title today.[12] It once did, and that entry is the source of a story you will see repeated constantly, almost always garbled. The actual printed record: a four-year-old, 176 lb St Bernard named Ryettes Brandy Bear moved 6,400 lb 8 oz of railroad steel on a four-wheeled carrier across a cement surface, 15 feet in under 90 seconds, at Bothell, Washington on 21 July 1978, owned by Douglas Alexander of Monroe, Washington.[13] Ten days earlier the same dog moved 6,600 lb but stopped five inches short of the required distance, so it did not count.
Three corrections worth making, because the wrong version is everywhere: the dog was not named “Ryan” (that is a corruption of the kennel prefix “Ryettes”), the owner was not “Douglas Alsop of Kirkland”, and it was on wheels over concrete, not a sled and not snow. That last point is the one that matters here: even this famous figure is a wheels number, under a third of 22,039 lb on rails, and the two are not the same test.
Two ledgers: poundage and ratio
Result sheets in this sport print two numbers for every pull, and they are two different records. There is the poundage column, how much weight moved, and the percentage column, weight moved per pound of the dog. A ledger that mixes them produces nonsense, which is exactly how a 97 lb Newfoundland’s ratio entry became a strongest-dog-in-the-world claim.
The gap is enormous. Banzai, a 43 lb American Staffordshire Terrier, is reported at 3,900 lb, about 90.7 times her body weight.[18] Mr. Wednesday moved five and a half times that poundage at 118.49 times his.[4] Neither figure beats the other, because they are answers to different questions, and most federations place dogs on the ratio rather than the poundage.
This page is the poundage ledger: which dog moved the most weight, where, on what, and when. If what you actually want is which breed comes out on top once you count ratio, mass, grip and everything else, that is a genuinely different question and it has more than one right answer. We answer it next door in which dog breed is strongest, by each measure.[24]
The heaviest figure, and our interest in it
Disclosure, in the body text
We breed Boerboels, and the two dogs holding the heaviest figure in this ledger are sired by our stud Peterbuilt Hakeem. That is precisely why every number on this page carries its federation, its surface, its date and a working link, and why our own row is graded on the same three-value scale as everyone else’s. If our figure were traceable only to a press release, the ledger would say so, in the same words it uses for everybody else’s. The full governance disclosure for that event, including who organized it, who judged it and who sponsored it, is on our Boerboel weight-pull page.[23]
On raw weight moved, the Boerboel currently owns the top of the ledger. The three heaviest federation figures in the sport are all rails results, so they rank directly: Boerboel 22,039 lb, American Pit Bull Terrier 16,146 lb, Greater Swiss Mountain Dog 14,445 lb.[3, 7, 8] That is 5,893 lb of daylight, about 36 percent, on the same surface under the same kind of rules.
It is not one freak dog either. Five of the eight heaviest pulls in UPF’s entire published archive are Boerboels, including the top three: 22,039 lb twice, 21,336 lb by Conquest at just 128 lb, and 17,076 lb by Alucard at only 97 lb.[3, 6] A Boerboel named Zazza holds the heaviest figure in the European Weightpull League’s archive too.
Who holds it, one dog or two? Reconciling the contradiction
Here the corpus and the primary source disagree, and it is worth settling rather than asserting past. Every published account of a Boerboel weight-pull world record names a single dog: CR’s Sun WuKong, owned by Eli Carver of Cold River Boerboels (coldriverboerboels.com), credited with 16,917 lb in November 2025.[22] UPF’s own sheet for 9 May 2026 records two dogs at exactly 22,039 lb: Sun WuKong at 164 lb and his littermate Mr. Wednesday at 186 lb, with the handler on both official profiles listed as Cold River Boerboels.[3, 4, 5]
Both readings are defensible, and the sport’s own rules explain why. Weight pull does not place dogs by raw poundage. The UKC rulebook places on weight pulled per body pound and breaks any remaining tie with the fastest pull time.[1] Apply either tiebreak and Sun WuKong is ahead of his brother: 134.38 percent against 118.49, and 23.22 seconds against 25.03. UPF placed them 3rd and 4th on exactly that basis, both behind a lighter dog with a better ratio.[3, 4, 5]
So crediting Sun WuKong alone is not an error, it is the sport’s tiebreak correctly applied. What would be an error is saying he moved more weight than his brother. He did not. Both dogs moved the identical 22,039 lb, and the federation’s own sheet says so. Our ledger records the poundage as a tie and the placing as Sun WuKong’s. That is not us contradicting the people who were there; it is one more column than the coverage carried.
The one honest qualifier is the one this whole page is built on: no organization ratifies an all-time record or publishes a records list, so 22,039 lb is the heaviest documented pull rather than a certified one.[6] What it is not is uncertain. If another dog moves more on a rail cart, the sheets are public and the events are open, and this ledger will change the same week.
For the sourced Boerboel picture behind those numbers, read our Boerboel weight-pull page and our Boerboel strength guide.
Dog Weight Pull Records FAQ
What is the heaviest weight a dog has ever pulled?
22,039 lb, on rails. Two Boerboel littermates each moved it at a Unified Pulling Federation event in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania on May 9, 2026: CR's Sun WuKong at 164 lb body weight in 23.22 seconds, and CR's Mr. Wednesday at 186 lb in 25.03 seconds. Both figures appear on the federation's own results sheet and on each dog's official UPF profile. It is the heaviest single-dog figure in any weight-pull organization's published results. The next heaviest from any other body is 16,146 lb, set on rails by an American Pit Bull Terrier named Moose in 2015.
Is there a Guinness World Record for the strongest dog?
No. Guinness World Records publishes no single-dog weight-pull record of any kind. The only dog-pulling record it lists is a team category: heaviest weight pulled by a dog sled team, 145,302 lb (65,910 kg) by 210 dogs at Whitehorse, Yukon on October 22, 2000, which works out to roughly 692 lb per dog. Guinness did print single-dog entries decades ago, but they were retired and are no longer published.
Did a Newfoundland pull 5,045 pounds as the Guinness strongest dog in the world?
The figure is real, the title is not. It traces to a retired printed Guinness entry called most proportionate weight hauled: Barbara-Allen's Dark Hans, a 97 lb Newfoundland, who pulled 5,045 and a half pounds (2,289 kg), stated as 52 lb per lb of body weight, at the 1979 annual Bothell, Washington weight pull. That is a pound-for-pound ratio record, not a heaviest-load record, and Guinness publishes no such category today. We could not trace any Guinness title called strongest dog in the world.
Who holds each federation's dog weight pull record?
They are not one leaderboard, so each has to be named separately. UPF's heaviest published figure is 22,039 lb on rails (two Boerboels, 2026). W3PO's is 16,146 lb on rails (Moose, an American Pit Bull Terrier, 2015). The American Pulling Alliance's is 14,445 lb on a rails and carpet track (Dezzy, a Greater Swiss Mountain Dog, 2023). IWPA's is 6,075 lb on wheels over carpet (Tank, a Mastiff at 187 lb, May 1, 2022), and IWPA is the only one of them that calls its figure a record. The UKC publishes multiples of body weight rather than pounds, so no UKC poundage record exists.
How much weight can a dog pull?
It depends on the surface far more than on the dog. At the 2022 IWPA Championships the same field of dogs pulled on snow one day and on wheels over carpet the next: the median finishing pull was about 10 times body weight on snow and about 25 times on wheels, and a Mastiff named Tank tripled his own snow figure the next day on wheels. On low-friction rails the numbers climb much higher again, into the tens of thousands of pounds. The widely repeated line that a fit dog can pull about three times its body weight matches the UKC's minimum qualifying pull on snow, and is far below what a conditioned dog does on wheels.
Has any dog pulled more than 22,039 lb?
No single dog in any federation's published results. A handful of larger numbers appear in public weight-pull data but collapse on inspection: they are single-extra-digit typing errors, contradicted by the percentage column printed beside them on the same row. The only genuinely larger figure anywhere is the Guinness dog sled team record of 145,302 lb by 210 dogs, which is a different category entirely.
Is there an official dog weight pull world record?
Not a unified single-dog one. Different organizations keep their own records on their own surfaces, and a rail figure and a snow figure are not the same achievement. Only the IWPA publishes something it calls a record, and only for its own Championships on wheels and snow. Guinness recognizes a dog sled team record but no single-dog title. So the honest phrasing is always the record in this organization, on this surface, on this date.
Sources & further reading
- [1] Official UKC Weight Pull Rulebook: the 16-foot pull in 60 seconds, surface classes, the qualifying-pull minimums (8x body weight on wheels, 10x on rails, 3x on snow), and the rule that places dogs on weight pulled per body pound and breaks a remaining tie on fastest time. United Kennel Club. https://www.ukcdogs.com/docs/rulebooks/weight-pull-rulebook.pdf
- [2] International Weight Pull Association: rules and organization (wheels and snow scored separately; IWPA sanctions no rail pulls). IWPA. http://www.iwpa.net/
- [3] Official results sheet, 'Spring Into Bully Max' weight pull, 5/9/26, Pittsburg PA, rails: Boerboels Wednesday (186 lb) and Sun Wukong (164 lb), handler Cold River Boerboels, each recorded at 22,039 lb, the heaviest figures in the federation's published results. Unified Pulling Federation (UPF). https://unifiedweightpullfederation.com/assets/files/events/events_6a5b6241a0346.pdf
- [4] Official UPF dog profile, 'Wednesday' (handler: Cold River Boerboels; breed: Boerboel): one recorded pull, 22,039 lb at 186 lb body weight on rails, 25.03 sec, 118.49 percent, placed 4th. Unified Pulling Federation (UPF). https://unifiedweightpullfederation.com/pdfs/profiles/dog_pdf_6a5d26ea399c0.pdf
- [5] Official UPF dog profile, 'Sun Wukong' (handler: Cold River Boerboels; breed: Boerboel): three recorded pulls, 22,039 lb at 164 lb in 23.22 sec (134.38 percent, placed 3rd), 16,917 lb and 12,142 lb, all on rails. Unified Pulling Federation (UPF). https://unifiedweightpullfederation.com/pdfs/profiles/dog_pdf_6a5d2610969e6.pdf
- [6] UPF published results archive and event index (the federation publishes no all-time records list). Unified Pulling Federation (UPF). https://unifiedweightpullfederation.com/results
- [7] Official result sheet, pull 15-10 'Summits 2015', Monroe MI, 4/18/2015 AM, surface stated as Rails, chief judge Toni Yoakam: Moose (APBT, 104 lb) 16,146 lb in 25.84 sec, 155.25 percent, 125 lb class. NOTE: the original host, worldwideweightpull.net, no longer answers on http or https (it resolves but never responds), so this sheet survives only in the Internet Archive snapshot of 6 July 2022, which we retrieved and read on 1 August 2026. World Wide Weight Pull Organization (W3PO), via the Internet Archive. https://web.archive.org/web/20220706082449/http://worldwideweightpull.net/15-10-MonroeMI-Rails.html
- [8] Published results archive, 4,125 sanctioned events from 2003 to May 2026 (the source for APA's heaviest internally consistent result, 14,445 lb by Dezzy on rails/carpet, 5/27/2023). American Pulling Alliance (APA). http://www.weightpull.com/results/home2.asp
- [9] IWPA Record Holders tables, by class and surface: the heaviest entry anywhere in them is 6,075 lb by Tank (Mastiff, handler Darwin Lumbattis), wheels on artificial surface, Grand Rapids MI, 2022. IWPA states that records are only set at its Championships, and sanctions wheels and snow only, never rails. IWPA. http://www.iwpa.net/IWPA_Championships.html
- [10] Official result sheet, Pull 77, 'IWPA Championship 2022 - Back to the Roots', Grand Rapids MI, Sunday 1 May 2022, Wheels on Carpet (carpet over asphalt), chief judge Jean Wilson: Tank (Mastiff, 187 lb) 6,075 lb in 15.34 sec, 32.49 times body weight, Unlimited Class. Also the source for the wheels multiples quoted on this page (49 completed pulls, median 25.2 times body weight, range 7.2 to 57.7). IWPA. http://www.iwpa.net/2122/Pull77.html
- [11] Official result sheet, Pull 76, same championship, Saturday 30 April 2022, Snow on hard-packed artificial snow: the same field of dogs one day earlier (42 completed pulls, median 9.9 times body weight, range 2.6 to 29.6). Tank pulled 2,000 lb here at the same 187 lb body weight. IWPA. http://www.iwpa.net/2122/Pull76.html
- [12] Heaviest weight pulled by a dog sled TEAM: 65,910 kg (145,302 lb) by 210 dogs, Whitehorse, Yukon, 22 October 2000. This is the only dog-pulling record Guinness World Records publishes; there is no single-dog weight-pull title. Guinness World Records. https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/76753-heaviest-weight-pulled-by-a-dog-sled-team
- [13] Retired printed Guinness entry, 'greatest load shifted by a dog': 6,400 lb 8 oz by the 176 lb St Bernard 'Ryettes Brandy Bear' at Bothell, Washington, 21 July 1978 (full-text searchable across scanned Guinness editions). Guinness Book of World Records, printed editions, via Open Library full-text search. https://openlibrary.org/search/inside?q=%22greatest+load+shifted+by+a+dog%22
- [14] Retired printed Guinness entry, 'most proportionate weight hauled': 'Barbara-Allen's Dark Hans', a 97 lb Newfoundland, who pulled 5,045 1/2 lb (2,289 kg), stated as 52 lb per lb of body weight. Present in the 1981, 1984, 1985, 1987, 1988 and 1989 editions among others; The Kids' Dog Book places the pull at the 1979 annual Bothell, Washington weight pull. Guinness Book of World Records, printed editions, via Open Library full-text search. https://openlibrary.org/search/inside?q=%22Dark+Hans%22+%225%2C045%22
- [15] 'How Much Weight Can A Dog Pull?' by Justin S., 11 December 2023: the widely repeated opening claim about 'the Guinness Book of World Records strongest dog in the world, a Newfoundland, who pulled (you won't believe it), 5,045 1/2 pounds', and the rule of thumb that 'a healthy, fit dog can likely pull about 3 times their own body weight'. NotABully.org. https://notabully.org/how-much-weight-can-a-dog-pull/
- [16] 'Weight pulling': fourteen bullet points naming sanctioning bodies and clubs, no records section, and no occurrence of the word 'record', the Unified Pulling Federation or the Boerboel anywhere in the article body. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weight_pulling
- [17] 'This Secret from the World's Strongest Dogs Can Improve Your Dog's Fitness' by Mara Bovsun, updated 27 April 2021: Philo, a 5-year-old Samoyed, pulled a cart of cinder blocks weighing more than 1,800 lb to win an event at Doggie U K-9 Academy, Bayshore NY, with a reported personal best of 3,500 lb. American Kennel Club. https://www.akc.org/expert-advice/health/secret-to-improve-fitness/
- [18] Competitive Canine Weight Pull by Terry Long, CPDT-KA, 13 July 2010, updated 21 March 2019: 'Banzai' (Duvall's Sureshot Kamakazi), a 43 lb American Staffordshire Terrier, reported at 3,900 lb, 90.7 times her body weight; also the UKC surface minimums. Whole Dog Journal. https://www.whole-dog-journal.com/training/tricks_games_sports/competitive-canine-weight-pull/
- [19] 'Dog breaks weight-pull record' by Alex Perry, 27 March 2017: Delbert, a two-year-old, 150 lb giant Alaskan Malamute owned by Debbie Lee, 'pulled 5,400 pounds to break the record' at a Mid-Atlantic Weight Pullers competition at Epps Farm Supply, Suffolk VA. The article calls it a track record and names no sanctioning body for the figure. The Suffolk News-Herald. https://www.suffolknewsherald.com/2017/03/27/dog-breaks-weight-pull-record/
- [20] 'These dogs pull their weight', 3 March 2003: 'The official dog pull record is 5,022 pounds, pulled in 1995 by Gaitor Red.' No organization, surface, breed or body weight is given anywhere in the article. The Union (Grass Valley, CA). https://www.theunion.com/news/local-news/these-dogs-pull-their-weight/article_a311d558-8e7f-5d3a-9b8c-6e82755ea99b.html
- [21] 'MOST weight ever pulled?', a discussion thread archived 21 April 2021. The Mafia claim appears in a single reply posted 19 June 2009 and prefaced 'Here is some info i found. Not sure how current', with no link, sheet or date. It is the only public trace of the figure we could find. Go Pitbull Forums, via the Internet Archive. https://web.archive.org/web/20210421182455/https://www.gopitbull.com/threads/most-weight-ever-pulled.12627/
- [22] 'Bully Max Training Facility Hosts UPF Weight Pull Event, African Boerboel Sets World Record', 24 November 2025: names Sun Wukong alone, owned by Eli Carver of Cold River Boerboels, at 16,917 lb. Pet Age. https://www.petage.com/bully-max-training-facility-hosts-upf-weight-pull-event-african-boerboel-sets-world-record/
- [23] Boerboel weight pull: records, rules, the governance disclosure and honestly-labeled numbers (companion page). Peterbuilt Boerboel. https://www.peterbuiltboerboel.com/the-boerboel-breed/weight-pull
- [24] What is the strongest dog breed? The breed question by each measure (companion page). Peterbuilt Boerboel. https://www.peterbuiltboerboel.com/strongest-dog-breed
- [25] IWPA published season results index and previous-seasons archive, the source for our own sweep of IWPA's per-event sheets beyond the Championship record tables (the heaviest wheels result found anywhere in it is 6,250 lb by Noble, a 200 lb Mastiff, 3/9/2013, and the heaviest snow result is about 3,380 lb). IWPA. http://www.iwpa.net/Pull_Results.html
Ledger and sources last reviewed 1 August 2026, when every URL above was re-checked and returned a live page. Two entries are archive copies by necessity: source [7], because the World Wide Weight Pull Organization’s host no longer answers, and source [21], because the forum thread now requires JavaScript. Figures are federation-specific and surface-specific and are not directly comparable across surfaces or sanctioning bodies. Where we could not trace a figure to a primary source we say so in the row rather than dropping it, because knowing a number is unverifiable is more useful than never seeing it discussed.
Keep going, with the receipts
The record sits with a Boerboel right now. Here is how the sport actually works, and here is the breed question the ledger deliberately does not answer.