Todd n Natalie
OverCamper
Yep, lol.
I don't think the trailer was overly huge either. I think a few dealers may not have given it a second thought.
They even said 'We want you to be safe'. Made me appreciate that dealer.
Removing rear seats to increase payload capacity?
- Thread starter dole
- Start date
I don't think the trailer was overly huge either. I think a few dealers may not have given it a second thought.
They even said 'We want you to be safe'. Made me appreciate that dealer.
Porkchopexpress
Well-known member
Yeah, I guess salesmen have never had a great reputation for honesty.Crazy world we live in unfortunately
Todd n Natalie
OverCamper
Yep. Unfortunately.Crazy world we live in unfortunately
I think a lot of time it's just obliviousness. Not that that is an excuse.
I was in sales for over a decade (not rv's) and I couldn't believe how much bad info sales people told clients RE: HP, fuel mileage etc...
Some salespeople are just that. Salespeople. They could easily switch from selling furniture one day to pick ups the next. Don't really care what they sell. Seen it firsthand many times.
nickw
Adventurer
I have a buddy who sells medical equipment for a living...figured I'd be a good guy and give him a good deal on a dirtbike, he hustled me to no end, waivered, played games and got a killer deal and I cleaned it up and threw in a bunch of goodies....and when it was time to sell one of this dirtibikes that I was interested in....TOP dollar, no negotiations, take it or leave it....
Maybe I am just a chump....but the world I grew up in is not the world it is now.
I'm ok with a salesperson turning the screws if they are at least honest about the tactics and reasoning but not when they play games and misinform...but agree, I think they just don't know
Buddha.
Finally in expo white.
At the dealership I work at we had a sales guy who was trying to convince a guy that “no it’s not a rotten floor, it’s a floating floor”.
The customer saw through the bs but the sales guy is still employed.
rruff
Explorer
BSing well is probably the most lucrative skill/talent in our society. Politics, marketing, most businesses...
Porkchopexpress
Well-known member
I once had an employee at an oil change franchise tell me that if I didn't get the full synthetic oil, my oil pan would rust.
Todd n Natalie
OverCamper
Yep. This is what I saw. I guess I was a little more accurate on my info cause I was an enthusiast so was always reading up.
Never was a great salesperson though cause I didn't have the high pressure mentality.
ChasingOurTrunks
Well-known member
Interesting video that sheds some light on the real world plight of Timmy and an overloaded vehicle.
Of note for me was the Jeep GC blowing out the front tires in a turn due to weight shifting. It’s important to recognize that this is a rolling test - no brakes - so it doesn’t speak to that question, but it does speak to why overloading a vehicle is not the best idea from a suspension and tires perspective in an emergency. I’d like to see a Moose Test 2.0 that includes “natural” breaking behaviour, but this shows that even using vehicles within spec can introduce major handling/performance issues in a crisis. Over spec would, reasonably, only make this worse.
Of note for me was the Jeep GC blowing out the front tires in a turn due to weight shifting. It’s important to recognize that this is a rolling test - no brakes - so it doesn’t speak to that question, but it does speak to why overloading a vehicle is not the best idea from a suspension and tires perspective in an emergency. I’d like to see a Moose Test 2.0 that includes “natural” breaking behaviour, but this shows that even using vehicles within spec can introduce major handling/performance issues in a crisis. Over spec would, reasonably, only make this worse.
rruff
Explorer
Not very relevant to the discussion since you can easily mod an overloaded 1/2 ton truck to handle better than any stock 1 ton with the same load. Being "overloaded" isn't the problem. Thinking that your 1/2 ton will be just fine in stock form is the issue.
Pickups will suck in a slalom test regardless, and will do even worse with a camper in the bed. You have to know the limitations of your vehicle and drive accordingly.
Todd n Natalie
OverCamper
ChasingOurTrunks
Well-known member
Fully agree with your conclusion there Rruf -- but I think this is kinda my point. Do you trust your neighbour to know the limitations of their vehicle? To @Todd n Natalie's story of unscrupulous sales people, do we trust sales people to truly sell you the "upgrades' necessary to make a 1/2 ton haul a load? The same sales tactic touting "floating floor" campers probably also tells people that adding aluminum pucks under your springs to get a 2" lift will help you carry more "because there's more room for the springs to bounce" (I've heard that claimed in another thread about payloads).
I think the Moose Test video is relevant - these are vehicles that are allegedly being tested within their designed operating parameters. If a person buys a half ton truck and tosses too much weight in there, they are way worse off than if that same person person in the same situation (with the same gear) buys a 1-ton truck that is made to carry the loads properly. Granted, this "way worse off" can be narrowed with upgrades, but that introduces another problem.
There are tens of thousands of more-or-less identical 1 ton trucks that give us a really good statistical view of how they perform. These are designed by engineers, crash tested, run through countless QA processes, etc. and they meet a certain standard. This isn't just a legal standard but also a liability standard -- automotive recalls are no joke for a car company's bottom line, and they don't like doing them often, and so they have a strong interest in making sure the vehicles they sell are safe when used within design parameters, because that's the main reason for needing to recall -- a vehicle being used "normally" not acting safely. They have been taught this lesson several times, expensively -- tire recall, fuel tank placement, frame corrosion, airbags, floor mats, roll overs ($250 mill on that Mercedes A-Class from the vid, for example) etc.. These are all examples of where the engineers have gotten it wrong and collectively it's caused untold number of deaths and who knows how much money.
And these are the people who know what they're doing. They still mess it up and produce unsafe vehicles occasionally even with countless systems and processes specifically intended to catch their errors.
A hobbyist's upgraded 1/2 ton will never have the same level of rigour so there will always be an increased element of risk. I'm not saying a capable person can't uprate a trucks' ability to carry stuff safely - as I said earlier, they do it all the time in Australia for instance, and at the end of the day we're talking about human-engineered machines which means humans can re-engineer them to be a daft punk song (harder/better/faster/stronger) -- but as I mentioned before, looking at what the Aussies do to those vehicles and the engineering and fabrication involved, I don't see anyone in North America modifying trucks to that degree on a regular basis, and simply tossing an upgraded suspension into the rig isn't enough -- if it was, I would bet the Aussies would just do that. I will absolutely admit that the Aussies might be engaging in a bit of overkill, but the folks who do this have engineering degrees and likely done a bunch of math informed by real-world failure data of various components, materials, and designs. I, on the other hand, have Google and need to take my shoes off to count higher than 10, so I'm going to defer to the engineers.
Just from this thread, we know there are a lot of things to consider when "upgrading" a trucks carrying capacity:
- Tire rating
- Tire Size
- Rim Size
- Caliper power
- Caliper design
- Pad surface area
- Pad composition
- Brake cooling
- Brake System design (Hydraulic vs vacuum)
- Contact patch of the tire
- axle rating
- Payload rating
- Curb Weight
- Weight Distribution
- Sway bars
- springs
- shocks
- chassis strength
- gusseting requirements for axles and chassis
- height of load/Center of Gravity
- Timmy's dog
- The moose
I'm sure that's not an exhaustive list, but all of these things intersect and interact in unpredictable ways in a crisis situation. Maybe the brakes are fine for the load, but the weight is too high causing a rollover. Maybe the springs and shocks are perfectly dialled, but the sway bars are too tiny. Maybe the axles are rated for the weight, but the chassis isn't gusseted properly and twists in high speed maneuvers. Maybe the truck handles just fine but under heavy braking, that weight shift we were talking about blows up one of the front tires at the worst possible time (like the Jeep in the video). It's not totally random -- it's very predictable in many ways -- but in order to predict, we need sample sizes and testing. The only ones doing that are the Australian GVM up fitters and the original manufacturers near as I can tell. Hobbyists don't tend to modify a half-dozen trucks and crash 5 of them to know the 6th one will work well, after all. Can a hobbyist overland increase payload safely? Yes. A hobbyist Boy Scout once built a working nuclear reactor in his garage. That, however, is very much an atypical situation, and for most people, the right answer is "buy a vehicle spec'd to what you need rather than modifying what you've already got".
Back to my original conclusion: Heavy weight = buy bigger truck.
Better conclusion, and I think where you and I totally agree (the rest is just for the fun of the jaw-wag!): Any weight = know the limitations of your rig.
bkg
Explorer
I don't believe that is accurate.
rruff
Explorer
They aren't race cars. The 3/4+ trucks have very simple suspensions... really nothing new there for many decades. Bigger trucks (> 1 ton) and nearly all older trucks have torsionally flexible frames by design. They aren't designed to handle "crisis situations" predictably... let alone the fact that 99% of drivers have no clue how to drive in a crisis anyway.
This is what Consumer Reports had to say about the latest F250 compared to 1/2 ton trucks: " While going in a straight line is one thing, piloting this behemoth in corners is another matter. Handling, in a word, is clumsy, and this monster truck is reluctant to turn. Overall maneuverability is horrid, and the turning circle is laughably huge. Most HD truck buyers get that this is par for the course. " It isn't going to get better with a camper on the back...
Like I said earlier, making a 1/2 ton drive, stop, and handle better with a load than a stock 1 ton is simple. It sure ain't rocket science.
If you want to really worry about safety, then maybe be concerned about the huge class A motorhomes. How do you think they'd do on the "moose test"? They take ~2x as far to stop as that overloaded 1/2 ton truck you are worried about... and that is perfectly legal. A 93 year old grandpa with poor vision and the reaction time of a sloth can pilot one of these with nothing more than a basic driver's license. How likely do you think it is he knows how to maneuver that rig in a crisis? All those guys driving big trucks and semis are better drivers, but their rigs are inherently terrible at maneuverability and stopping. I doubt they are going to pick running off the road and flipping vs just slamming into you when the choice presents itself.