bennutts

Thanks Larry that makes a little more sense to me now. So what happens if you exceed cargo capacity?

larry2c

Your truck will explode in a massive ball of hell fire! Well, probably not that bad :-)

I'm sure that on most days, not much would happen but on a bad day when some joker cuts you off and you slam on the breaks, you may find that you don't have enough brake to stop your truck before bad things happen. Or maybe it's a long downhill mountain road. In either case, if you are in an accident and the highway patrol suspects you might be over loaded, it could result in your insurance company not paying out for your damages. I have never seen this in person but others have mentioned that the highway patrol occasionally will do checks if they suspect an overload condition (I assume it would be a grossly overloaded truck that caught their attention).

I've seen plenty of overloaded TV's on the road and I've probably tipped past the max load myself a time or two but if you're starting out new trying to match a truck and trailer, I'd say do it right and your towing experience will be much better. Driving white knuckled every day would not be my idea of a fun trip.

smokeywren

You're overloaded over the weight capacity of something in your suspension, frame, or brakes. Springs, shocks, tires, wheels, maybe the frame of the vehicle, maybe the stopping capacity of the service brakes. Overloaded suspension or frame or brakes are more likely to break or cease to function as designed, so your rig could wind up being upside down on the roof and sliding out of control down he wrong side of the highway, while you and your precious family are hanging from the seatbelts. Not a pretty vision.

bennutts

Guys I really do appreciate all your info. I guess now what I'm looking at is should I look for a lighter trailer, if so what weight should I be looking for or should I just bite the bullet and go for the new truck?

smokeywren

I've already answered that, in a post up above. In a nutshell, if you don't want to trade for a heavier-duty tow vehicle, you need to get off your butt, load up the truck with everybody and everything that will be in it when towing, fill up with gas, then weigh the wet and loaded tow vehicle. Here again are the proceures to answer your question:



But that's maximum wet and loaded trailer weight, not dry trailer weight. Add about 1,000 pounds to dry trailer weight to get lightly-loaded trailer weight. With your miniscule payload capacity, I would guess than any dry weight over 4,000 pounds will overload your wet and loaded tow vehicle.

larry2c

One of the real bite in the butt things about RV's is that the RV dealer will not usually even mention the cargo capacity. Ford, Chevy and Dodge (and I guess the imports as well) are all bragging about their towing capacity and the RV makers are making lighter & lighter TTs but in reality, the smaller TTs are about all you can tow comfortably - and not really any 5th wheel. Our TT is 21 ft and gross' out at about 7000#. When we add in the humans, dogs and gear, that max's out our cargo capacity. We travel light and without much water in the FW tank unless we are going to be boondocking.