Personal truck towing basics – understanding payload, limits, avoiding fines and lawsuits

[testerdahl]

Before you attach anything to a hitch, make sure you understand the basics for personal truck towing like payload and towing limits to you can avoid fines or even a civil lawsuit. You may think those only apply to commercial operators such as semi truck drivers and you’d be wrong. Police officers can enforce the same laws on towing limits on personal vehicles as well. The laws aren’t specific to just commercial vehicles. Plus, lawyers can take negligent owners to court for overloading their trucks much the same way commercial trucking companies face lawsuits for accidents. There’s no legal difference. […] (read full article...)

 

[AK FISH]

You should really go to the scale house to get your actual curb weight empty bed, one driver, dogs, significant other, full tank of gas, any emergency road gear you always carry and find out what that number is. THEN subtract that number from GVWR to get a real world payload number, not the factory sticker supplied number. It will be lower. Subtract tongue weight (using max gvwr not the DRY weight by OEM) for the trailer and see how much is left over for your stuff in the pickup bed and cab.

Need more weight for stuff in bed and cab? get less trailer with a lower tongue wt. Agree that no amount of air bags, overload/helper springs, higher rated tires is going to increase gvwr, payload capacity, or gross combination weight rating for your vehicle. If you need higher numbers, get a bigger HD pickup that can handle load with wt. ratings or a smaller trailer.