No, please blow away! The more people chew these things up the better, gets more solid info out here for us to paruse.
I noticed my '00 half ton was a great deal heavier than my '65 three quarter ton, by a couple thousand lbs. Then again, my half ton has a LOAD more fun stuff that came in it.
As a rule, since most folks dont have scales handy to chack thier weight, I dont load anything more than the truck can carry and sit level to the ground, wether it's in the bed or on the hitch. If it's sitting nose up, I'm overloaded, it's that simple.
This whole "strong 1/2 ton" and "weak 3/4 ton" sounds more like military math than anything, afterall an elephant is just a mouse built to government standards! I know weight and balance and how they can accurately weigh a tandem trailer rig with 2 portable roll-on scales, but how they make a "half ton" equal two is beyond me!
Regardless, I do realize the chassis is built to cary a set gross load, HOW it is caried is determined by the configuration of the truck. A heavier setup like my dumptruck bed may give me a lighter payload than the same chassis with a fixed flat bed due to the weight differences in the beds and gear. So yes, I can see where my '56 2-ton truck carries a lot more than 4,000 lbs. One would think that when talking about standard pickup trucks tho, it would be a set weight,...
Ah well, I quit trying to make sense of all this stuff. If I really need to carry more than a 1'000 lbs in my half ton, I'll subtract my basic weight from the max weight and call it a load capacity. Still wont load it past level tho, just to be safe!
