razehm wrote:
It is illegal to go over you gross weight vehicle rating.
You'd be hard-pressed to validate that statement. This idea has been tossed around this forum and the like for years. Not once have I seen someone quote a statute that restricts a vehicle's weight to the GVWR. There's tons of regulations when it comes to commercial vehicles, but I have not seen any in regards to non commercial operators. Don't mean they don't exist, but no one has ever come up with one.
Like I said above, what you say is possible in a state with weight base registrations. You cannot legally exceed the registered weight of the vehicle in one of these states. If the vehicle was registered with the GVWR then yes, it is illegal to tow over the GVWR. However, in most of these states there's a pay to play system. You can essentially register the vehicle for whatever weight you want. If you have a 10k GVWR truck then you can pay to register it for 11k or 12k. In those cases you are legally towing over the manufacturer's GVWR. Whatever weight you pay for then that's your limit.
Commercial vehicle enforcement officers are just that. Their focus is commercial vehicles. Officers aren't pulling over non commercial operators over for weigh checks. Even if they did, they would need some statute that would prevent you from towing above your GVWR. They do however pull over vehicles that are obviously severely overweight. In those cases it's just a safety issue.
