spoon059 wrote:
By the way, just one more example to prove that they are arbitrary... I live in Maryland. Maryland allows me to register any vehicle for any weight that I want, I just have to pay a higher tax/registration fee for that higher weight. I can register a Ford Ranger for 12,000 lbs GVWR if I want to. If I put E rated tires and wheels with a load capacity of at least 3000 lbs on my Ranger, I can legally load that Ranger down to 16K lbs. I can then figure out a way to load a heavy 5th wheel on that Ranger and drive it through California on my regular non-commercial class A license which rates me to drive any non commercial vehicle and any non commercial trailer.
While incredibly stupid to do so, California couldn't do a darn thing about it. I'm under the federal bridge limits of 20K per axle, I'm under my registered weight of 12K lbs and I'm under my tire rate of 12K lbs. This is all hyperbole, mind you, because the Ranger likely wouldn't make it out of my driveway without falling apart, but my point is that it would be PERFECTLY LEGAL.
You can do the very same thing in Texas. If I pay the extra amount for a 10,001-14,000 GVWR registration then I can legally load my below 10k GVWR truck with that amount. The penalty for exceeding your registered GVWR here is to pay the GVWR you got caught with for the amount of time the vehicle was registered. So if an under 10k GVWR registered 5 year old truck got caught with a load that puts him in the above 10k to 14k GVWR registration class, then you would have to pay the difference in registration cost ($56) for every year that the vehicle was registered in Texas and have it registered in that GVWR from that point on.
Some people get a little confused in regards to what GVWR the law is talking about since factory GVWR and registered GVWR are used for different requirements. When it comes down to vehicles with a factory GVWR of under 26,000 lbs that don't need a CDL, the GVWR that matters in the eyes of the law is the GVWR you register your truck for, not the factory GVWR. Factory GVWR and registered GVWR are two different things. One is enforced by law(registered) and the other isn't(factory) when it pertains to vehicles below 26,000 lbs GVWR.
