Maybe Canada is different, but truck manufacturer GVWRs are not legal limits, nor are they engineering limits. They’re artificial numbers the truck makers hang on them to fit certain license classes.
Brochure-reading camper guys are the only ones who stress so much over them.
I’ve been waiting 20 years for someone to cite an example of someone being denied an insurance claim because their camper weighed more than the glovebox sticker spec.
A truck’s capacity absolutely can be increased. It’s done all the time in the real-truck world. Its like saying if you put an addition on your house, you don’t really have more square footage because the original builder didn’t add the addition.
I once bought a rolled-over F250 4×4 and swapped the whole chassis to an F150 I had. You’re not gonna tell me I didn’t increase its capacity.
This site’s own Mello Mike wrote an article about setting a proper example and trading in his older dually for a newer single rear wheel truck because it supposedly has more safe capacity and he would be “within his numbers” when in fact the opposite is true.
His old Dodge had a Dana 80 rear axle rated by Dana at 11,000 pounds and he had way more tire capacity. No stock SRW is more capable if you look at the actual hardware not artificial numbers on a sticker. He had 10,800 pounds of tire capacity on the rear of his dually, and an axle that could take it.
There’s no way his new SRW has the hardware to actually have more capacity than the old dually did. But, it’s got a bigger STICKER on the glovebox door…
Northern Lite does actually drop each of their campers on a scale after building them and gives them a real weight sticker. Maybe there are others who do and they should be applauded.
But other than that, at least 1000 pounds should be added to so-called dry weights for real, on the truck and loaded to go figures. I’d say usually more than 1000 over the dry number.
