Originally Posted by
bfife
Fill your truck up with all the stuff you take camping. this includes folks, fuel, firewood, etc. then go down to the local CAT scale and weigh it. Now you take those numbers and subtract from GVWR to get your max rating. you can also subtract actual rear axle weight from GRAW to know what your available pin capacity is. just looking at cab stickers and owners manuals is just farting in the wind until you have some real world numbers
airbags are just a bandaid for an overloaded situation
Barney
Also remember what the max weight of the tires and wheels are - typically the wheels are around 3400lbs each and so are the e-rated tires (give or take a few pounds).
Leaves you a max of 6800lbs on the axle best case which is rated @ 6K, the new 350 is now (as someone stated) rated @ 7K. Therefore the axle would get to max before the tires on a 250, and for a 350 they pretty much both max together.
The reason I know this is I have a pretty heavy slide in camper and I was @6980lbs on the rear of my last truck which was a 3/4 ton and I was over on the axle and pushing the tires at max, and I was not OK with that so I moved up to the 1 ton.
Just make sure you take good care of those tires as they are the weakest link...which is why I am considering Rickson Wheels and F or G rated tires. Like my safety cushion
