So long as you are not exceeding any axle or tire rating, it is legal to tow the trailer in both cases. Whether or not it's safe depends primarily on how it's loaded and hooked up. (Improperly hooked up or loaded, the empty trailer could be just as unsafe as the full one.)
The only legally enforceable weight ratings are axle and tire ratings.
debraindi wrote:
So If somebody rams my rv from behind and and I'm 50 bls over my insurance company could say I was over loaded because my rv didn't stop in time, like the soso where replaying to.
If you are rammed from behind, the problem isn't that YOU didn't stop in time - it's that they didn't stop in time. Also, rear-end accidents are the fault of the person doing the rear-ending, by convention, unless there's documented evidence of something odd happening (like non-functional brake lights - hard to prove after the accident).
If you're overloaded and don't stop in time, you'll still likely only get charged with "failure to assure a safe clear distance". (In other words - you need to know how long it takes you to stop and make sure you have that much room.) Trucks, trailers, brake systems, vary considerably - a trailer combination well within margins can require more distance to stop than one that is many lbs over if the latter happened to have better brakes or the TV had better brakes (better adjusted, newer, stronger, whatever...).
