Overweight

I posted this on RV.net, and I am looking for advice.

I just bought an 06 F250 King Ranch SRW 4x4 Diesel to tow a 5th wheel which is as yet unbought. I am looking at a Heartland Landmark 36', weighs 12500, pin weight 2300. I know it will be close to the GVW of 10000, but what if I am over? I also have a pilot's license, and I wouldn't go over weight an ounce in the plane. What is the realistic scenario for towing a FW like this?

This was posted after all of the responses:

OK, so I went and weighed the truck this morning. It was 7880 with me and fuel. Wife and kids are good for about 300 pounds more. Poodle is 6 pounds. Everything else would be in the RV. GVW is 10000 pounds, GCVW 23000. RV empty 12500, pin 2300. Yes I know it all will vary.
The way I figure it that puts Gross Weight at 10486. How much of a concern is going over 486? I AM on a diet, so that will decrease soon too!
I bought the truck from my Uncle Chuck at Bartow Ford, really a nice guy if you need one. I called him on this, and he wondered if you can change the pin weight by loading the back of the RV. What is the consensus on this?

Karl,

I am over my truck's GCWR by a couple hundred pounds. I wish I was a couple hundred pounds under, but I don't lose sleep over it.

In my experience, there is not much space to load heavier items toward the rear of the trailer, unless we're talking about temporarily putting stuff inside the rear of the trailer while traveling, then moving it out.

My Landmark has decent overhead cabinet space at the rear but I don't feel comfortable putting anything heavy in them (glass fronts too).

Jim

You are over with that Dually? What is your GCWR?

Towing a little overweight is not a problem.

Just make sure you are never in an accident. My insurance company will not pay any claims if I am found to be overweight, and have any accident. (even a fender bender) God forbid if I hurt, or kill someone. If this happens I'm sure I will spend the rest of my life pennyless.

Yeah, my 2500HD is currently for sale, and I am shopping for a 450/550 dually

This ( insurance ) never crossed my mind when I was trying to decide whether to stay with my 2500HD or get the 3500HD. I just didn't like the idea of 2500 lbs. and two tires. I am glad I traded up!

I'm beginning to feel like I'll be a Lone Ranger regarding Tow Vehicles. I'll be pulling our BH 3400RL with a Chev 2500HD 8.1 Allison w/4:10's. It has all of the same specs as the Duramax as far as weight capacities are concerned. With a few mods I've done, it pulls our current 5ver with ease. The 3400 will be about 3500# heavier than our Jayco when loaded so I think it will do the job. From the signatures I've seen, I'll be one of very few gassers. I checked the GCWR on the GM website and all of the HD's 8.1 and Duramax are at 22,000#. I don't think i'll be near that. Wish me luck.

kognito said:

Towing a little overweight is not a problem.

Just make sure you are never in an accident. My insurance company will not pay any claims if I am found to be overweight, and have any accident. (even a fender bender) God forbid if I hurt, or kill someone. If this happens I'm sure I will spend the rest of my life pennyless.

Yeah, my 2500HD is currently for sale, and I am shopping for a 450/550 dually

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I don't believe this to be true. I believe the insurance company will pay any claim that involves you and your insured vehicles. No matter over loaded, drunk, stupid mistake or careless. If the injured party wants to sue you in civil court, after the insurance company has paid any claims, they can, and could very possibly win. That is if they were able to prove you were over loaded. In almost all accidents, nothing gets weighed. If there is a death, and the police call in the DOT, or accident reconstructionest, then they would weigh for proof looking for a cause.

Don't know about your area but up here in Alberta the insurance will pay any claim against you but they will not repair or pay for your own vehicle if your impaired not sure if your overweight but it wouldn't surprise me.

Trap

overwieght

Found out my pin weight is 2676 lbs. If you add the weight of the hitch and the box with all the good stuff that everyone carries pin wieght goes up... So if I subtract the hitch and the box with assorted junk my pin weight of the 3055 would be about 2350ish. But I think I do need the hitch for some reason

I had a truck stolen from my driveway with the key in it and my insurance investigator / friend told me they even insure stupidity! But with the public insurance in Alberta you would be covered, but they probably wouldn't re-insure you.

In case anyone is wondering, we just returned from 2 1/2 weeks travelling Florida to Ohio and back. F250 pulled like a champ through all of the hills of West Virginia. Stopped good too. I never went over 65 mph (well, maybe once or twice). I was always in too much of a hurry to weigh it at one of the CAT scales, and anyway, ignorance is bliss.

Over weight

OK guys, first off if you think you are over weight you are. Most drivers can compensate for an under powered truck but none can compensate for a vehicle that cannot safely be stopped. Towing is not the relevent factor here, stopping is. Any moron can tow a truck and think "hey this is great I can pull all the hills". How about the down hill side? Can you stop in time? These are big rigs, not toys. Get real. Those who are too busy to get weighed or just a "little" over should stay in a Motel. When things go bad on the highway there is no warning. Oops, can I stop in time! Not a good feeling. Sorry to pontificate here but this is serious. I never heard anyone say their truck was too big but I have heard many say their truck is too small.
As an aside I speak from experience having well over one million accident free miles driving gasoline tank trucks. Eighteen wheels, 104,000 pounds, do you think I thought about stopping, you bet I did.
Under weight beats over weight every time. No way to cheat.
This is too important to take lightly. No pun intended.
jdw

JoeW4300- that was probably one of the best worded post on the subject. I used to move overweight overdimensional equipment that could not be made legal and had to get government permits. One of the clauses of these permits was being restricted to 80km/h or 50 mph. Anyone can get it going but pulling in the ponies ain't so easy!

JoeW4300,
Are you one of thoses truckers behind me at 65 mph, only 10 feet of stopping room? Why is it that people pulling 104,000 pounds think they can stop on a dime? Please try not to be so heard on others, we have all sinned!

I think now that, we all get a trailer and a big pick-up truck, we can only start to see what real truckers go thru 10 hours a day, 5-6 days a week!
In our RV travels, we have dealt with a few of those 10' behind truckers, which is about one in fifty, but most of them are reallly good. On the CB, you should hear what they stay about us sometimes. Over the years of traveling in our previous motor coach (over 40,000 lbs.) we have stayed at many truck stops and ran with truckers cross country in the middle of the night. If truckers are on a person's rear end there just might be a reason.
In the motor coach, I consantly had problems with other drivers pulling in front of us and taking up the safe stopping I was trying to keep, or cut in front of you and slam on their brakes.
Every driver should have to ride with a semi driver for a day.
Congraduations to Joe for his million miles of safe truck driving.
Manbe next year we should get Joe to come to the 2007 Rally and give us some driving tips, and pointers on now to back into camp sites and get our rigs out wihtout hidding anything.

Actually I kind of have to agree with JoeW4300. With the power of these new Diesels we are able to pull way more weight than they were designed to especially with the 3/4 tons being able to pull as well as some 1-ton dually's. Their needs to be better education about tow weights and tow ratings for trucks. I agree with the theory that people don't complain about to much truck.

Trap

Are you one of those truckers behind me at 65 mph, only 10 feet of stopping room? Why is it that people pulling 104,000 pounds think they can stop on a dime?

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If you are one of those people that have a trucker only 10 feet behind you, it is probably because you cut in front of the trucker thinking you could gain another car length on the idiot talking on the cell phone in the other lane or the woman putting on the eye makeup while driving.

I just returned from an over 6500 mile trip on our freeways and byways. I never encountered a bad truck driver, but you can bet I did cuss a lot of automobile drivers, mostly for cutting in front and taking up that safety zone that I try to always keep between me and who ever is in front of me. I'll admit, all truckers are not perfect, but a bad one is hard to find.

I applaud and honor any person that can drive one of those monster trucks on our highways of today for a million miles without an accident. My hat is off to the truckers of the USA.

Congratulations Joe on the million miles.

Ignorance is bliss???? It's not ignorance if you are fully aware that you should get weighed. And, it takes less then 5 minutes to do so. While you are fueling, get your wife to run in and pay for the weigh, drive over to the scale, drive back to the front door and pick her up with the papers. Could be the best 5 minutes you ever spent.

Having a million accident free miles is nothing to sneeze at, we applaud you, Joe. My husband has the highest regard for truckers, always gives them room to pass, and blinks the lights for them when it's safe to come back over. They are always appreciative and respond. We all pray that we won't have that situation where stopping is an emergency, but we have already been there, had to back it down so hard that the ABS on the truck was in full gear!!!! And thank goodness we had weighed and know what we had pushing behind us. And it was not a trucker, but a kid in a small pickup that tried to get on the highway in front of us, had no where to go and stopped dead, crossways in front of us!!!

Ignorance is bliss?? I think most of us would say that is sticking your head in the sand. GET THE RIG WEIGHED, PLEASE!!!

Tinkers
Logan & Pat
Big Horn 3400RL #455

Jim,
You are wrong about me! I move on down the road and others pull out in front of me! It doses no good to cuss out other drivers either. The reason I responded is that I felt it wrong to point fingers and call names. This is all that I will say on this matter! Let's try not to attack each other!
Ken

Truck drivers are individuals not one unity. There are good ones and bads ones just like there are good "civilian" drivers and bad, good teachers and bad, good police and bad, etc, etc, etc..... You can't lump every one into the same barrel just because of their job or anything else for that matter. The only thing we have exactly the same is that we are all HUMAN! And not one of us is perfect, we can only try to do the best we can and be nice to each other!