Good thing I don't have toys......

When we bought the 4100 we were not intending to put anything too heavy in the garage..... no motor cycles or anything like that. A siege weapon, (not too heavy) and some kegs with home brew, a rack or two with clothing. Good thing too. Even though the big red sticker in the garage says the load capacity for it is 3000 pounds, and 2000 pounds (I believe) for the ramp the pesky little yellow sticker on the port bow says that the TOTAL payload (for the WHOLE camper) is just over 1100 pounds..... After dishes, clothing and what have you that would leave what, 400 or so pounds to put in the garage.... not even one motor cycle.....

Now granted, the yellow sticker says that those numbers are with full water, about 830 pounds. So if you leave your tank empty you could bring another cycle or snow mobile or whatever.....

Point is, there is no way in heck you could put anywhere close to the 3000 pounds in there and be legal....

A word of caution to those who come after. If you are planning on hauling toys, you better buy an absolutely stripped down version and pay very close attention to the yellow sticker........Ours has two AC's, the porch setup, the electric queens and a few other things. This all comes out of your payload.

Oscar,

The Heartland website shows the 4100 starting with about 3400 pounds of capacity - based on dry weight for the base configuration without options. Even considering weight of options, personal gear, and fluids, there ought to be way more payload capacity than your post would indicate.

So You might do well to call Heartland Customer Service at 877-262-8032. Have your VIN # ready. They can review the numbers with you and make sure you have a correct understanding. If you find out something new, please come back and clear things up for everyone.

Its a good thing we don't stop at weigh stations. we have had at one time or another in our 07 4012, full fresh tank, 2 full size polaris sleds ( 1200lbs), 2 kids sleds (250lbs), 1 dirt bike (200lbs), 2 adult kyacks ( 200lbs), 2 kids kyacks (75lbs), misc tools, aircompressor, patio furiture, treadmill disassembled (200lbs), and clothes. Empty says 15,000 fully loaded just over 18,000. This thing is a beast my truck is 11000 lbs our weight ticket read 32,000lbs granted some household goods were in the truck. but, I have absolute faith in the frame on this trailer. It has hauled everything we have asked it too. we run load range E tires, always check the air before trips, We don't load it like that all the time just during our change of station moves. Other than some of the fit and finish parts of this trailer, we love it.

Yup, if you want to move stuff you have to run heavy.

Some day I'm going to have someone build me a trailer on three 10K axles and pull it with a Pete.

danemayer said:

make sure you have a correct understanding

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Well Sir, here's the decals in question.....Admittedly English is my second language, so you go ahead and tell me where my reading comprehension is falling short....

Now as I said in my original post, if you leave ALL water and waste tanks empty you can get to 2100 pounds, but with a normal load of pots, pans, plates, boots, beans, and beer, say 600 pounds, and a half a tank of water, another 500, you are down to 1000 pounds to put in the garage...... I stand by my premise, and I would suspect Heartland's customer service will interpret their legally required decal just the way they wrote it.

Edit: I forgot about the 35 gallons times 6.4 #/g = 224 pounds of gasoline in the gas tank (unless you want to leave that empty too, but that limits use of the generator somewhat) as well as the almost 100 pounds of propane and bottles......

That takes it down to about 675 pounds you can put in the garage.....

I'll indeed run with tanks (nearly) empty and fill up water and gasoline right before I get to where I'm going. This will not only keep the weight down, it will also save fuel.

Almost looks like you may have the wrong decal. Is your GVW not 18,000 pounds?

The GVW is 18K, the dry weight is supposed to be about 15K, subtract the water storage addition and you are are left with 2K cargo.
Something seems amiss with your decals.

Maybe you understand it perfectly. Maybe not. Easiest way to find out is to call and ask.


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porthole said:

Almost looks like you may have the wrong decal. Is your GVW not 18,000 pounds?

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It is, and the decal to the left of the ones I photographed says so. To make danemayer happy I will place the call today, but I think the ultimate answer will come from a trip to the scales down the road here.

I'm with snowshoe. Load whatever you want that will fit and enjoy your rig and stop over thinking. The truck is carrying 20+% of the weight.

So I made the call to Heartland.

The way this is done is that they weigh the first one or two examples that come off the line, establish a base weight for the model, and then calculate a dry weight for each specific one based on the options list, and the weight of the options as they are provided by the respective manufacturer. This gives us the yellow decal.

We agreed that based on the base weight of 14595 # and the yellow sticker they are saying there are about 1400 pounds of options installed.

I have the generator, three seasons wall, electric beds, second AC and the patio system.


Onan QG 5500 280 # (Specs per website)
Happijack Beds 550 # (Phone call to Happijack and some educated guessing. They sell the lifting system only, and they are about 250 #. HL or
someone else makes the beds and I am giving them 300 for the two which is a guess, but probably not far off.)
The second AC 100 # (Dometic Website)

That leaves 470 # for the patio system and the three season wall, which seems a little high.

Unfortunately the CS rep I spoke to said it was not possible to "audit" and verify what numbers were used.

My next step is to go to the scales. Based on what I find there I may try to convince someone (AJ ?) to push a little harder to audit the numbers and possibly
get me a new (correct?) yellow sticker, or it may turn out to be close to correct if not dead on, and I may just not worry about it and try to keep myself under 18000# as best I can by managing fluid loads and keep on trucking.

Once again though, I want to caution if you're buying one of these to load up 3000# of toys in the garage, as the big red sticker there suggests you can do, that you take a long hard look at the options and the impact they have on the CCC, which is 3495 # on an absolutely base unit with NO options.

That # will include your toys, and anything else you put in the coach, plus propane, gasoline and water.

I do find the numbers game interesting. I've never called Heartland directly on this, but on my 09 Cyclone, the GVW on the sticker is 20,400. However, I have 3x6,000# axles which would seem to equate to 18K. A few years ago, I was talking to my dealer about my rig weighing in at just over 18K when loaded and he said I was overloaded because the limit on my rig was 18K. Of course we had a discussion about the sticker and he didn't believe me so he went out and looked. Surprise, it was really 20,400 on mine but on a similar 2010 sitting next to mine, the sticker was down to 18K.

I've posted similar comments on the forum before and some people speculated that the difference was that the calculation included the pin weight plus the 18K. I can't imagine that there really is any difference in the frame on this rig and the next year so what changed? Is it simply the calculation to stay within some federal limit?

To your point about not having any weight in the back, I can tell you that this rig really seems to want weight in the back. For the first year or so, we traveled with very little in the backend (a couple of kids bicycles). Then we got a golf cart which added about 1,000# more. The ride in the truck changed dramatically for the better with the additional weight back there. It definitely lowered the pin weight...

I have 3x6,000# axles which would seem to equate to 18K.

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The axles don't carry 100% of the weight. 10-25% to the GVWR will be on the 5'er hitch - varies by trailer.

Our Rushmore has a GVWR of 16,200. The axles are rated to carry up to 14,000. If we had 2,200 pounds on the hitch, and our actual weight was 16,200, we'd be maxed out on the axles. But in our case we've actually got 3,500 on the hitch. The actual total trailer weight is 15,000. With 3,500 on the hitch, the remaining 11,500 is carried by the axles vs their max rating of 14,000.

This is all interesting but incomplete. There could be other weak links in the system. The tires are spec'd to carry up to 3750 each. But since weight is not evenly distributed, some of our tires have a lot of margin. One is almost at max capacity even though the trailer loaded actual weight is 1,000 pounds under GVWR. If I didn't know the individual wheel weight, I would assume I could pack another 1,000 pounds into the trailer.

This is why it's important to know the weight on each individual wheel, and on each axle, and on the hitch.