We might say that tow ratings are based on best case scenario, which few of us would ever actually tow. We may notice that most of the ads showing a truck towing something, often is a boat trailer. It's fairly common to load boats at just 8% or so tongue.
To use my Frontier as an example, it has a 6300 pound tow rating. Using 8% to 10% of 6300 would result in 500 to 630 pounds of tongue. This would easily keep the truck within it's payload rating......as long as I was alone ( no passengers, no extra junk in the bed, etc ).
