How Payload Affects Tow Capacity
Hey it's Brock here with Rock Hill Farms And today I want to try to give some Degree of clarity to a topic that I see Debated a lot in the comments section of My videos so I sometimes pull a dump Trailer I pull an equipment trailer I Haul a skid loader and a tractor and as A consequence of that I've made a few Videos talking about tow capacity GVWR payload and what you can safely and Legally hold And there's one portion of that Conversation that seems to End up with a lot of debate And that is the relationship between What you're towing and your payload I get a lot of comments that say that Two things don't have anything to do With each other The comment usually reads I've been Hauling for 30 years and you don't know What you're talking about because your Toe toe capacity doesn't have anything To do with payload and they'll more Specifically tell me that the pin weight The tongue weight of your trailer Is not related to your payload and That's just factually incorrect Your tow vehicle has a GVWR that is the Total amount of weight that that vehicle Is rated to haul including the vehicle Itself Passengers A toolbox anything in the bed
And the tongue weight of your trailer So you load a trailer down and it weighs 10 000 pounds and it is a bumper pull Trailer 10 to 12 percent of that trailer Depending on the type of trailer should Be resting on the truck So you're looking at roughly a thousand Pounds of the weight of the trailer is Now resting on the truck and it's being Carried by the axles that thousand Pounds is part of your payload so if you Have a truck with a rated payload of 1500 pounds and you put three guys in it That weigh 300 pounds a piece now you've Got 900 pounds and a thousand pounds of Tongue weight and you're exceeding your Limits Now where the conversation gets Interesting Is people say it doesn't matter And I can see the debate there they say No one's going to pull you over and say You're over your payload and that's Probably true But There are some reasons that I believe we Should all try to stay within the rated Capacities of the vehicle And they have to do with warranty Insurance liability And they're not everyday concerns now You can do something for a long time and Not have a problem but what if you get Into an accident
Or you have a warranty claim on your Vehicle And You were exceeding your capacities on Your vehicle There's going if you're in an accident There's going to be a police report And that's going to be reviewed by the Insurance company so I would just Personally everyone can do what they Want personally I would prefer to stay Within the ratings of the vehicle That's one aspect of the conversation The second aspect of it is probably more Important that your axles have a weight Rating and you need to make sure that You're not putting more weight on your Axles than they are meant to handle one Way that this often plays out is for Someone who's buying their first HD truck And sometimes that might be that you Want a big camper An RV and you look at the weight of the RV And the tow rating of a three-quarter Ton diesel truck say this works But You might find out later that the pin Weight on that RV is way more than your Payload on your diesel truck And again will that truck pull it yeah Probably so but should you do that That's I mean I guess you can make that
Decision yourself And if you're going that route you get a Lot more payload From a three-quarter ton gas truck Because the gas truck weighs a lot less So that's one way to get around it Another way is to step up to a one ton Or an even bigger truck but that does Have its own drawbacks that part just Relates to the RV guys but let's look at A real world level guys doing what I do How does this affect you and what do I Do about it So I've got my three-quarter ton diesel Truck and it has a really high tow Capacity but the payload is a lot less Than you would think And it's because it's a diesel and it's The mega cab and it's got too many Features on it and if that's a buying Lesson that I would tell someone looking To buy a truck like this That the three-quarter tons only going To have a high enough rating if you Don't Weigh it down with those extra features But what I do on a daily basis when I Load a trailer I check my pen weight I know what my Payload capacity is and I use these Gauges right here from way safe to know How much pen weight I'm putting on the Trailer And I've got another video on the way
Safe where I show I spent half a day loading up every Configuration I own And looking at where do I park this Machine on this trailer to get a proper Pin weight and you've got two purposes Number one the most important thing is To make sure you load your trailer in a Way that it's safe because too much Tongue weight or not enough tongue Weight become very dangerous driving the Vehicle you need on a bumper pull you Need 10 or 11 percent tongue weight and On a gooseneck you want 15. So I know what my machines weigh I know What my trailer weighs when I'm loading Up a machine onto a trailer I know what That unit way is and I say okay I've got A bumper pull and it weighs 10 000 Pounds so I should have a thousand Pounds of tongue weight and it might be 2 000 pounds if I have the skid loader On the gooseneck it's all about knowing Your numbers so once I know that number And I know I should have a thousand Pounds of tongue weight I pull on to where I think I'm centered Then I get off and check and if I should Have a thousand pounds of tongue weight And this gauge says 800 pounds that's Not a safe Towing condition So I pull forward if it says 1800 pounds Then that means I've got way too much of
The trailer's weight riding on the truck So I use this gauge to tell me if I'm Centering my load I also use this gauge to tell me what my Load weighs now people have really Pushed back on me about that how can it Tell you what it weighs well it can do One of two things If you know your load is centered Quick math will tell you how much weight You have If you know how much weight you have Quick math will tell you If you're centered or not So here's a real world example of that I Take the dump trailer out and I'm Hauling off debris I don't know what it weighs there's Concrete in it there's dirt there's tree Branches just cleaning up this site I don't know what it weighs but I'm Going to drop it centered in my trailer So now a little bit of quick math I know that centering the weight in my Dump trailer gives me 10 tongue weight Just divide this by 10 and I know when It's full Because you can way over fill it I've Over filled my dump trailer till it Wouldn't lift and I had to shovel it all Out or a portion of it out And it's not any fun it's also not safe So I use this gauge to tell when I'm Centered on my trailer and I use it to
Know how much weight I have in my Trailer if I'm centering the weight on The trailer So that's the way I do it there's Another method that works pretty good And that is I know what I'm doing Because I've been doing it a long time And I'm going to eyeball it a lot of People will say I pull my machine on Until I see the truck squat when the Truck squats I know I got enough weight On there what I would say to that Personally my truck never squats I have Way overloaded it I've wrapped the gauge On this and said okay I just overloaded This And still didn't squat the truck it's Because I have Factory air ride it just Doesn't squat so I can't really use that Method but what I've done is I know with This machine on this trailer where to Park using the gauge and I put a paint Line on So if you want to order one of these Hitches you can get 15 off with my Discount code So I have a financial incentive to Recommend this product But the fact is I think It's not that expensive and it makes Towing safer and that's why it doesn't Bother me one bit to push a product that I think is a good product And the real reason I made this video is
I released a short last week and a bunch Of people are on there Throwing a fit that I don't know what I'm talking about and I'm telling you I Do know what I'm talking about when it Comes to this And sorry if it was kind of a rambling Video but I wanted to try one more time To address the topic I appreciate you Taking time to watch I'll put links on The screen to a couple more of our Videos I'll see you next time
