CWR vs Payload

This should be added to the truck camper help section...

Tim,

Bravo. Thanks for writing that out great explanation.

I went round and round on this when shopping for my camper. I had the Ford specsheet in the glove box telling me the max recommended weight for a slide-in camper, Ford's GVWR, and the rear axle, tire, and wheel ratings. Most of these made sense, but the pamphlet in the glove box was somewhat arbitrary. I felt like it had a touch of voodoo weight calculating in it.

I found that the real weight limitation as far as general rear payload was the wheel rating. This was a couple hundred less than the tire rating. Having the actual weight numbers from our local CAT scale was critical for me to get a handle on what my real world numbers were. Don't be afraid to drive over them at the nearest truck stop -- it costs ten bucks and will give you both axles separately and combined.

Beware of going to the state weigh stations and county landfill scales. Our local dump was off almost 1000 lbs.! After weighing the truck empty with a full tank I felt like I had the numbers to safely calculate what was my likely maximum camper weight I should consider. At the risk of making everyone's eyes glaze over (again) I cut and paste the following from my blog:

"Our truck is a 2006 Ford F350 long bed, single rear wheel crew cab with the King Ranch option package and camper package. This makes it weigh (unloaded and empty of everything, even people) 7860 lbs. total. This is called the Gross Vehicle Weight, or GVW. I weighed it at the local CAT scale at the Flying J, with a full tank of fuel.

Our truck is listed on the Ford factory info pages as having the following specs:
Rear Wheel (each) 3525 lbs.
Our tires (each) 3650
Rear Axle 10,000

If you do the math our rear wheels together have a 7050 lb. capacity, so this becomes the limiting factor, not our tires or axle ratings.

Our truck's rear end weighed 3140 at the scale. Subtract that from 7050 and you get 3910, or the most payload that I can safely load onto the rear of the truck. Now this does not take into consideration that I might have been slightly forward on the scale or the curvature of the earth or some other nonsense, so I am happy using this number."

Judging from how the truck behaved on it's first road trip being constantly buffeted by semi's and high winds I am happy with the resulting purchase. Keep in mind that I only drive around 65 mph so you might have a different need according to speed. Here's how the weight rating knowledge played a part in our purchase.

First, I did not consider any camper that would put us over OUR figured weight threshold. I figured the loss of the tailgate and the addition of a passenger (the Admiral) was a wash so I didn't worry about that. I kept the slide-in camper spec sheet in mind but did not feel absolutely bound by it, since it was so far off of our calculated weight limit of almost 4000 lbs. However, this 4K figure was my absolute limit and I was definitely not interested in bumping into it. So somewhere between 3000 and 3500 lbs. was to be my desired camper weight WET. It really boiled down to how much I could keep myself and the Admiral from chunking a bunch of heavy stuff into the rig and how much faith I could put into the manufacturer's listed specs.

Second, I eliminated the brands I didn't like due to quality, features or layout. We ruled out a lot of campers based on reputation (the internet is a manufacturer's best friend or bane of existence). What was left was limited by availability and dealer location. That meant a few visits to check and measure things.

Lastly, what was left was three brands that had campers that would still fit into our weight limitations.

It was a simple matter to audition them and make a pick. The rest is wedded bliss! i hope you can figure out a plan and get some peace with it. This process will drive you crazy if you let it.

Please see my blog for more info on my stableload install and other TC musings @
Tim's TC Blog

So it would seem that's the first number to be ignored. From what I've seen on the glove box stickers at the car lots I doubt if I'm going to be under that number anyway with my soon to be WC840SB & Chevy 3500 combo, so I'm not going to worry about it I did the best I could matching the combo. I do expect to use about 3850 of the available 4105 lbs of payload estimated on the vehicle I've spec'd though, we'll see....

Thanks for the replies

On my old truck the CWR was exactly the payload rating MINUS 750lbs for five passengers. A whopping 587lbs.

CWR is the GVWR weight the vehicle is REGISTERED for minus the vehicle weight.
Meaning it is "paper" number.
It has very loose connection to actual vehicle capabilities.

That is my understanding also .

According to Woodall's , cargo weight and payload would come out the same , I don't believe they do .

I thought I read the CWR in the glove box is the Payload rating MINUS 150lbs per passenger the manufacturer allocates for each seat in the truck.
So, if you can seat 5 passengers, the CWR should be 750lbs lower than payload? Does that work in your case?

Woodalls explanations LINK