Truck

Poor maintenance , what often comes with little use is what shortens the truck life.
My 1999 Powerstroke was pulling 30,000 lb rigs routinely, when empty 450 truck with fuel and driver was over 10,000lb.
On CA grades quite often I had to climb long miles on 3rd gear (6-sp manual) and gas pedal firmly on the floor.
Still sold the truck at 300,000 miles running perfectly.
Met commercial hauler who clocked over million miles on the same engine. He did not run it empty.

I agree with the other posts.... his truck probably weighs 6500 pounds +/- a bit.

You left out the part about overloading , which does exponentially shorten the life of the truck . I am neither pro or con , there are simply to many individual factors involved to make a blanket statement .

A comment about shortening the life of a truck by using it:
Using a pencil shortens it’s life.
Eating an ice cream cone shortens it’s life.
Wearing your shoes shortens their life.

What do we buy trucks for, if not to shorten their lives by using them to haul stuff?

Seriously, Karl, you live in Arizona and travel without a full fresh water tank?

So since this topic has never been discussed before......lol
The last 3 comments from mkirsh, Kayteg and burningman sum it up and are probably the 3 most "to the point" posts on this website I've seen in a while!
Those that believe the absolutes of the "yellow sticker" are fine and conservative....to a point. It is not by any means an absolute, but it could be in the right scenario.
Some people are very astute, experienced, mechanically inclined and maintain their vehicles well and the other end of the spectrum are completely inexperienced, don't maintain their vehicles for squat and wouldn't know of the engine was getting ready to window the block until a connecting rod hit them in the shin.
Then there's the other group who know they "can" do something but are more secure or simply wish to have a large factor of safety or want the ultimate in comfort level/driving experience.

Combine all this together and the "right" answer for you is not going to be the "right" answer for someone else.

To those that can sort through all the factors intelligently, you can safely haul more with less. To those who can't or don't, please "buy" your factor of safety up front rather than building it yourself. And to the chicken littles, kill a bus load of orphans if you don't buy a dually, please think before you speak!

It's like this. You have a truck that has the same frame, same axles, same powertrain, same brakes as the same year 3500. If you add more springs, sway bar, maybe shocks, and tires if they aren't already up to it, you WILL upgrade the capacity. There are people here who always say nothing you ever do to a truck increases its capacity above the original stock rating.
That's as ridiculous as saying doing an addition to your house won't add capacity for a bigger family.
A truck is an assemblage of parts. If you assemble the same (or better!) parts, you have what you have, regardless of whether the factory screwed them together or you did.

P.S. all the weights you've listed do seem unrealistically low.
Never believe the spec, put them on a scale somewhere. Trucks and campers pretty much always weigh more than the sticker claims. Those weights are without paint, without bulbs in the tail lights, and with the interior full of helium.

Than you will always find small issues that you can't even name, but makes you leaving the vehicle smiling, or sad.
For example California Big Sur is a road that lot of RV owners call "white knuckle driving"
I drove it in 40' motorhome and it was "1 hand driving" for me.
The difference was that my motorhome was not one of those 40 footers build on 32 frame, but it was build on commercial Gillig chassis.
It cost more up front, but cost less later and makes you smiling between.

"Safety" is more a matter of properly maintaining your truck, and driving like there's something inside your skull besides salt water taffy. Do you run the tires until the belts are visible? Do you tend to keep trucks until the frames are rusted down paper thin? Those kinds of things are what make a truck "unsafe" not putting too heavy of a camper on.

The average driver know something is wrong right away if the rig is unsafe to drive, and will immediately turn around and go home to correct the issue.

Your two main concerns will be with COMFORT and LONGEVITY. Will you like driving the truck? Only you can answer that, and then only after you've plunked down the money and it's too late to do anything about it without incurring monetary losses. How long will the truck last overloaded as it is? Only time will tell, but for sure exceeding the GVWR even with the best bolt-on prop-ups money can buy does shorten the life of the truck.

From there it all boils down to money. Spend it now, or spend it later. Maybe more now means less later, or maybe it's the other way around? You won't know until it's too late to change your mind.

Will you be safe? Undoubtedly. Will you be HAPPY? That remains to be seen. All we know is putting trucks and campers together that are suited for each other on paper, rather than trying to force a combination to work, gives you a much better shot of being happy with your decisions in the long term.

Kayteg1 wrote:
Those don't weight much above 2000lb, yet you need blocks under rear wheels for leveling.

The blocks are because where we were parked on a sloped area.

You may have noticed that the wheel arch spaces are the same front and back.