Ultimate payload monster?

dodge guy wrote:
Best thing to do is load it till it breaks. Then go out and buy the same truck and back it off a few pounds so it won’t break.
Jeez, why does everything need to be to complicated!

Ha, while tongue in cheek, you’re sort of on the right track, theoretically.
And while many folks here vehemently disagree with my recommendations, they come from exactly what you said.
After many years in my career paths, I’ve fixed, or seen what breaks or broken many light duty trucks and have a pretty solid feel for what they’ll handle.
If more folks were more observant of others (great place to learn is by others successes and failures) and at least mildly engaged in what their vehicles were “telling them”, many of these questions or fears would be answered

RV pickup driver: "I scaled at the CAT scale at 30,921lbs so I'm just over GCWR blah blah blah towin heavy blah blah lot's of power blah blah...air bags blah blah..."

Driver of Kenworth heavy haul tractor, standing by his 220,000lbs GCWR load:

Around here the word is that police don't check single rear wheel trucks in commercial use. As a result a lot of people are running single rear wheel trucks when the world would be safer with them running duals. I know a guy that uses a 10 year old F250 gasser to pull a tandem dually dump trailer for his business. He frequently loads the trailer to the hilt but never gets stopped. That truck is a real testimony to the amount of abuse that Ford's 6.2 gas drivetrain can take.

Best thing to do is load it till it breaks. Then go out and buy the same truck and back it off a few pounds so it won’t break.
Jeez, why does everything need to be to complicated!

RoyJ wrote:


Food for thought, ever wonder how commercial haulers can suddenly, legally, haul a Cat D11 once they buy an overweight permit? Suddenly, every GVW/GCWR (not that semi tractors have those to begin with) + laws of physics gets thrown out the window with a government issued piece of paper?

What if I bought an overweight permit for my Ram 3500, then can I go over my GVW/GCWRs? Would accidents be magically avoided?

Tractors, and class 8 trucks do in fact have GVWR/GCVWRs plus axle weight ratings. And I have moved more than a few permit loads. And when you run up on a scale, they will check the weight on each axle/axle group. But they don't look at the axle ratings. What they do look at is tire ratings.
Then there are other things driver needs to know about where he can haul weight. In my area, a tri-axle dumptruck can be legal, cross a line on the map, and be $3,000.00 plus court cost overweight.
A overweight permit for your 3500? In my state they would tell you to just buy the license for what you want to gross. Years back a friend sent his girl to license office to renew plates on his 7 class 8 Macks, and buy the plates for his new Dodge 3500. She came home with 8 80,000 lbs local plates

Every time going over GVWR gets discussed, the scare tactic of "you can get your house sued away" shows up. I'm still waiting for one such real life case where someone under GAWRs, but over GVWR, gets sued in court. There're much easier fruits for lawyers to pick on.

Personally, as an engineer I'd love to sit in such a trial as expert witness. I'd go up an entire team of OEM engineers, and ask them to show how someone under GAWRs but over GVWR could have caused the accident. But somehow if the were under GVWR the accident wouldn't have occured.

Food for thought, ever wonder how commercial haulers can suddenly, legally, haul a Cat D11 once they buy an overweight permit? Suddenly, every GVW/GCWR (not that semi tractors have those to begin with) + laws of physics gets thrown out the window with a government issued piece of paper?

What if I bought an overweight permit for my Ram 3500, then can I go over my GVW/GCWRs? Would accidents be magically avoided?

Cummins12V98 wrote:
"And no, the manufacturers GVWR rating is NOT enforced by the law. Only the registered GVWR and road axle limits are enforced by law."

Probable true in the US but I "THINK" it is enforced in BC Canada. Someone can correct or confirm this.

It's true, we do technically enforce GVWR on light trucks, though it's almost NEVER enforced. An officer has to have visual suspicion to go through the trouble of guiding a camper to a local scale. Basically to stop people with 4k lbs campers on F150s.

JRscooby wrote:


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

You can only re-rate the GVWR by the manufacturer at the time of a new vehicle purchase or by an "upfitter" who is finishing up the build on a cab and chassis truck. Outside of this, it is very hard to change the manufacturers GVWR especially if it is used.

Here is a good article explaining it further. As stated, down-rating a truck is harder than up-rating one in many cases because vehicles below certain GVWR's have to abide my certain emissions, CAFE, and other federal mandates like braking distance which higher GVWR trucks may not have to abide by. However, higher GVWR trucks have to abide by added regulations on the back end.

Re-rating GVWR: Why and How it's Done

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

JRscooby wrote:

Cummins12V98 wrote:
"Trucks have outgrown these classifications and limitations yet the manufacturers ratings are restricted by them regardless if the trucks can actually carry more weight."

EXACTLY!!!

Or have the manufactures decided to badge their trucks lower than what they should so they make the ads look better? And with the weight of all the comforts pickups did not have when most where used to work, need the extra GVWR to haul the same amount?
All the F350s I had GVWR was 10,000. But both Fords that had "superduty" badge had 850 in VIN.

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 wrote 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.