I try very hard to never overload my truck. With my pin weight, I have enough remaining payload with my 1 ton SRW to be full of fuel and passengers and be below the GVWR.
I would buy any trailer that would overload my truck's GVWR when empty. If you were to have a crash, the legal and other consequences are not worth the risk. There are a ton of nice 24-28' 5th wheels I could pull if I had a 3/4 ton truck.
My next truck will likely be a dually just to eliminate this issue from consideration at all for any trailer I'd ever consider buying. I don't drive my truck empty very much so it'd be fine. The new SRW trucks do offer higher GVWR in a 1 ton though, so it'd be a tough choice. In 2005, it wasn't a tough choice; the 3/4 ton trucks hardly have enough payload to fill the cab with passengers (1600 pounds?!). By the time you install the hitch, there isn't enough GVWR left for pin weight. The GVWRs of trucks should have increased as the empty weight of trucks increased, but they didn't.
What I've learned recently is a lot of this is just the legal categories these trucks have to meet. It's really a shame; we could have had SRW trucks with 12k GVWRs a long time ago and 1 ton duallies with 15k even with normal 16, 17, and 18" tires. It's not like the powertrains and frames aren't strong enough for that. There's an ever increasing push for more horsepower, more torque, and higher GCWR, but it does us no good if we bust the GVWR first.
