Ultimate payload monster?

ShinerBock wrote:


We de-rate GVWR's in the medium/heavy-duty industry I have worked in for decades all the time. Many of our customers will de-rate their trucks GVWR to keep from having to pay added taxes and registration. For example, I had a mining customer that mainly hauled heavy in the mines, not on the roads. While he needed capability off road, he did not need it on road when transferring the truck between mines. So bought a class 8 truck and de-rated it to a lower GVWR to save money. It is completely legit and happens a lot. Another example is many oil field trucks that are speced out with heavier duty axles to handle the abuse of lease roads, but have a de-rated GVWR since they don't tow enough to warrant the higher GVWR on road.

Same goes for many of our medium duty fleets at our nine Ford dealerships. There are certain rules that trucks over 10k GVWR have to follow that trucks under 10k don't due to how the laws were written and how outdated they are versus the capabilities of todays trucks. Many of those who written these laws didn't foresee trucks being as capable as they are today and there has been no effort to change these laws by the states because it is a revenue stream.

Take the 26k combined GVWR law and needing a CDL. If a fleet is towing with an F350 with a GVWR of 11.5k and the trailers GVWR is over 14.5k (11.5 + 14.5 = 26k) then the commercial driver needs a certain CDL in most states and added regulations are placed upon the driver as well. Even if he is only towing 10k in this instance, the trailer's GVWR and the truck's GVWR puts him at 26k. However, if you de-rated the F350 (which Ford has an option for) to 10k or used a 2500 with a GVWR of 10k, then no CDL or added regulations is needed due to these same laws not applying to 10k and under trucks.

This is why I said in my earlier post that it would be suicide for a truck manufacturer to stop offering trucks under 10k GVWR because fleets would stop buying them. The only one's who really bicker about these weights and think the 10k is actually limit of a 2500 are recreational towers, not fleets who do it professionally.

I understand what you are saying. I have owned and worked trucks most of my life. But I have only bought 2 half ton pickups and 1 F 350 new. (And the 350 was at a real deep discount because the paint was damaged when the dealership burned)
I bought 3 Macks for a job. 16&44s, GVWR 50. But all hauling was off-road, or on closed hiways. I licensed them 24,000, and if they had to be moved, drove myself, because the "drivers" I put in them did not have CDL. (They made good money for part time work) But no matter what plate I put on them, the GVWR did not change.
At the same time I was running 3 Fords, where I had bought single axle tractors, changed front axles, cut and spliced the frames to make long enough for bed, and 44,000 rears. I used cab and engine from the newer trucks, but can not change the 80,000 GCVWR on ID plate. But I was still legal, and the state weight watcher would not even pull out the scales when GCVWR was around 110,000