The Stovebolt Site Forums The Parking Lot Big Bolts weight

Ok I am a bit of a dummy even though I have been around comercial trucks most of my 53 years and back in the 70s here in canada even drove one and for the past 10 years I have been running bulldozers for a living. There is one thing I am haveing a problem with.In the new trucks I understand the GVW stands for gross vehicle weight and the tare is the amount of load since here we are stuck with metric we usually now refer to them as tandems and triaxles but when I was younger we refered to trucks as 5 ton single axles and 10 ton tandems and 15 ton tandems. Now that was I presumed the amount of weight it could haul. My 53 GVW is 16000 for a total of 8 tons the truck itself cant weigh more than 3 tons leaving 10000 or 5 tons so we would have called it a 5 ton truck but does the actual weight of the truck determine what the truck is refered to making mine a 3 ton?.

Hy olddozer, the custom of calling trucks a 2 ton or a 5 ton or a 10 ton has allways been inacurrate at best, as you said if you take the net or tare weight of the truck, and subtract that from the GVW, you get the trucks true hauling capability, hope that helps.

on my daily driver pickup it is a half ton by the manufacturer ...but goin by given weight an such soon as a driver sets in the cab it is overweight for PA so they bump it up a weight class & double the cost of registration ...GO FIGURE!

"Tare" should be the empty weight, then add the "load" and you get the GVW, or total weight.

The "ton" ratings are just guesses, more of a model number sort of than the actual capacity. And as you noted the actual capacity is often several times more than the nominal "ton" rating.

Grigg

This has confused alot of people including me for a long time. I have a GMC 6500 dump truck that should be about a 3 ton truck, but its GVW is 33,200#'s. This leads me to believe the rating on trucks really has nothing to do with their GVW.

Danny

You are correct 71Farmtruck, until the much more meaningful GVW rating was adapted by USDT regulation. There has been much discussion over the years in here and elsewhere about those old "ton" ratings. All us older guys have our theories but in the end it is jsut so much hogwash and utterly meaningless except to argue about over a couple of beers. And I've yet to see any beer in here..

Awe come on now 53moneypit! You was just givin me the excuse I needed to sit down and have a beer. Who's buyin?

I agree with Grigg, it's more of a model number designation than anyting else. A hold over from an earlier age.

Thanks guys it helps when I find out I,m not anymore confused than any one else but the feed back I,m getting from these sites on old iron wether trucks or on construction machines is a true tribute to the fact that the the machines that made the roads we drive on and the men that ran them will never be forgotten as long as the foolish keep trying to get the darn things running.

Well that brings up an interesting thought about my commonly refered to 1 ton dump truck. With GVW at 15,000 and the truck empty weighing in at 8200,that leaves 6800 for load which is over 3 ton.
Must be just a nickname cause I ain't heard anyone ever call it a 3ton dump !
Or should I just dump the 1 ton name ??