Posted by Matt Wilson on Thursday, December 14, 2000 at 00:32:53:
In Reply to: Re: tonnage posted by R Davis on Wednesday, December 13, 2000 at 19:39:52:
The "1-ton" rating, then, as now, is just a nominal rating. Any owner/operator of a truck should pay more attention to the gross weight rating of his truck than to the nominal 1/2-, 3/4- or 1-ton, etc., nominal rating. If he looks at his owner's manual or data plate, he'll see that there is a gross weight specified, and when the empty weight is subtracted from this, the resultant number is the payload capacity, which is almost always much more than the nominal rating. This is what the warranty is based upon. If the manufacturer can prove that the operator exceeded the specified gross weight, then the manufacturer's liability is limited. The nominal rating does not come into play here.
My impression of actual carrying capacity (gross weight minus empty weight) being so much higher than nominal capacity is that the manufacturers over the years have tried and tried to out-do each other. They have inched up higher and higher, so that they can make claims that their truck is capable of carrying more than the other truck brands. I believe this has been taken to such an extreme that that we now have a situation where a 1/2-ton pickup is actually rated at a gross weight of something like 6000 lbs, which translates to a payload capacity of about 2000 - 2200 lbs!
This was even the case, to a somewhat lesser extent, back in the 40's and 50's. It's been a long time since a 1-ton truck really could only carry 2000 lbs!
Not that I'm complaining.