You could probably run down the road at 80,000 GVW with your pickup, assuming you had trailers with proper tire width and max axl capacity per federal bridge laws, legally mind you, if you had 80,000 lbs of paid for registration!
A local trucker was all over the news when he hit a bus? or some such thing, actual weight was around 100,000 total. Licensed at 70K. At one time he had a 160K registration on truck. oh the "overweight" news articles out there. Reality, he was under FBL amounts, so legal that way, but under his paid for license registration weight.
another trucker i know, was under his gross weight, but over the mas 34000 for his tandem trailer axel limit! got an over weight ticket! had to move a pallet of sod around, since he had a spider forklift on the trailer....took 30 min, then was ok'd to go to job site with sod!
Or the driver on here, ran across Az texas at over 100K lbs, got to Louisiana, max he could be was 80K. they gave him a ticket fo $300 or there about, pulled out company CC, paid the tax! was able to drive the 16 miles to warehouse, offloaded, headed back to az, did the same thing the following week! As the tax was cheaper than removing the 2nd trailer and having another driver or some such thing to deliver the whole load. value of load was worth WAY more than the tax/fine......
I'm sure many of us that have been on the commercial side can give you all all kinds of what happens when over weight! nice thing about it, generally speaking, being over weight and getting a ticket, means nothing, as its usually a non moving violation, just as a parking ticket can be. unless you do not pay it.....than watch out.
The basic meaning behind the bridge laws, is to protect the roads we all own. drive over the engineer designed limit of the road, you will pay the piper! or weigh more than you payed for the privilege of running down the road at X lbs, you will pay the piper. Police do not enforce your engineer designed warranty weight limit of your vehicle manufacture! it how many lbs per foot the road can handle, with out buckling up if on solid ground, or flexing and breaking if a bridge.....
marty