tonymull wrote:
Your cargo rating IS your payload, legally.
This may or may not be the case. My truck has been registered in 3 states so far. In Illinois, I had it registered for 12,000 lbs. The regular truck plates are 8k and the next step up from there is 12. Since it weighs 7300 empty, I wasn't going to plate it for 8k. So in m case, the sticker on my door had nothing to do with "legal" capacity--the GVWR is 9900, but the truck was plated for much more than that, and if I'd wanted, they would have let me plate it for even more than that if I wanted to pay for the plate.
After that, I moved to Indiana. Their normal truck plate is 7k pounds, the next rung up from that is 9 I think, and then the next step up from there is 10k and onward. I believe I bought a 9k lb plate.
A few years later, I moved to New Mexico. New Mexico plates trucks for their GVWR and there doesn't seem to be a legal process for plating a truck for something other than that, so that's what it has now. If there is such a legal process, I am unaware of it.
Every state is different and so it's impossible to generalize. Also, I would be surprised if there were any states that would allow you to operate a vehicle that was unsafe, regardless of whether it was in strict compliance with the weight on its registration.
The real uncharted area when it comes to RVs is insurance. Even if you're plated for more than your truck is rated for, your insurance company probably isn't going to take too kindly to you overloading your truck, knowing it's overloaded, and operating it on the public highway. I have yet to hear of a disallowed claim, but it seems like it could happen.
The RV world has lived in a gray area for decades whereby people have disregarded or been ignorant of the ratings of their devices and nobody has called them on it. Only in the last 10 years or so, for example, have 2.5" hitch receivers become more common. You really expect me to believe that nobody pulled over 10,000 lbs on a hitch ball before those things became common? Does it really make sense that my truck, which is capable of pulling something like 12,000 lbs from the factory, came with a hitch that is only rated for 10k weight distributing and something like 5k weight carrying? Of course not.
The time may one day come where all these people pulling huge 5ers with 3/4 ton trucks (pin weight busting GVWR), truck campers in general (nearly every truck carrying one is overloaded), and all these families pulling travel trailers and such with inferior tow vehicles, will be subject to weighing, tickets, fines, etc. Maybe not the same as commercial vehicles, but if manufacturers keep telling people that a camper that weighs 2400 lbs with nothing in it but water is made for a 1/2 ton truck, it's only a matter of time before someone gets hurt and the government steps in and does something about it.
