At the end of the day YOU are responsible for the end result of your actions behind the wheel.

Following the ratings and the numbers is not some sort of get out of jail free card. Not following them does not incur strict liability.

What it does incur is potential legal ambiguity. So if you do that in a commercial context and do **** something up you're at risk of scummy accident industry people (ambulance chasing lawyers and their PEs like stonehauler) getting involved because the party that did **** up sees a sliver of a chance to dodge the blame.

The sort of scumbag ambulance chasing stuff stonehauler is describing is basically the commercial equivalent of shamelessly blowing a stop sign at 1am, T-boning the **** out of someone and then trying to get out of paying up because the guy you T-boned just so happened to be drunk and you can use that to cast doubt as to whether they are partly to blame.

If you're worried about it get a dashcam. It's a lot cheaper than a bigger truck.

 

I’m still waiting for the case study where someone was held accountable for being over their GVW or GCW in an accident.

i could be convinced, but I’ve never seen one case where the “you could have avoided the wreck if you weren’t beyond your ratings” argument was successfully argued.

 

Here is a Motor trend article on towing overweight. In essence, it says "don't do it".

In my state, towing over the limit can cause you problems.
From my state laws:
"Negligence" - A person acts with negligence with respect to an element of an offense when he falls to exercise the standard of care which a reasonable person would observe in the situation.
“Criminal negligence”. — A person acts with criminal negligence with respect to an element of an offense when the person fails to perceive a risk that the element exists or will result from the conduct. The risk must be of such a nature and degree that failure to perceive it constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a reasonable person would observe in the situation.
My take (not a lawyer), a reasonable person will tow within the limits established by the manufacturer of the equipment they are using. After all, they designed the thing, they should know what it can handle. While simply being 5/10/100 lbs over the weight limit might result in "negligence", being at 230 percent of the carrying capacity and 160 percent of the weight capacity of the hitch, PLUS however much else it was over because of other stuff being in the vehicle, plus not having sufficient axle capacity for the trailer (overloaded the GVWR of the trailer), means that a person might be in the "gross deviation" category.

§ 631. Criminally negligent homicide; class D felony.A person is guilty of criminally negligent homicide when, with criminal negligence, the person causes the death of another person.

Criminally negligent homicide is a class D felony.

A person is guilty of vehicular assault in the third degree when, while in the course of driving or operating a motor vehicle, the person’s criminally negligent driving or operation of said vehicle causes physical injury to another person.



Vehicular assault in the third degree is a class B misdemeanor.

So, if you are driving your significantly overloaded vehicle down the road, and you have an accident that injures or kills someone...it is possible that you might get hit with criminal charges

Just get caught with no accident, and you are likely facing civil penalties.
Again, MY state.

 

Are you intentionally being obtuse or do you actually think a big company with deep pockets will ever go on record saying anything else?

The article basically says "you absolutely can but..." and then goes on to explain in way too many words how you're <gasp> responsible for the outcome if you screw it up.

He asked for a "case where someone was held accountable for being over their GVW or GCW in an accident" not for you to copy paste state law and then read it like you're playing bad cop to scare a teenager into narcing on his buddy.


PE isn't much of an upgrade.

 

First off, not a PE, and in any case, my field is not mechanical engineering. I am not anymore qualified than you are for saying that my truck can tow outside the stated manufacturer's limit, which is why I tow within those limits. In fact, pretty much the only one that CAN tell you that you can tow more is the manufacturer. As I said, some questions that would be asked if something happened and you went and said "In my judgement, it was within the capability of the vehicle" is..."okay, what are YOUR qualifications that would allow you to make that judgement? how did you come to this conclusion?" This is not something a scumbag lawyer would ask, it's pretty much the question ANYONE would ask.

Ultimately, it's not your judgement, but (at least for my state), what a reasonable person would think.

You saying "years of doing it" is not going to hold water if something did happen and someone got hurt. It just means that you've been playing the odds and they finally caught up to you.

I do not care what someone does on their own property. If a person has a load of wood that needs to be moved from one 40 acre section up to their house and they are going to be going over their own fields, that's entirely on them and I am not going to say "boo" about it. I might point and laugh if the vehicle hits a stump, a hole, or something else and their hitch falls off that rusty truck (and no one was hurt), but that's about it. I would never personally suggest that someone do that either.

On the other hand, I have seen far too many weekend warriors going down the highway at 70 mph with trailers that are WAY too heavy and/or balanced improperly for their vehicle. Their front tires almost lifted/bouncing off the ground on a flat road and the back end pretty much squatting on the stops. I've also seen too many trucks that have had so much stuff dumped in it that the entire frame has bent in the middle.

The OP asked about going 230 miles with a trailer that is heavily overloaded, with an undersized ball (6000 lb ball, 8000 lb load), undersized tongue, with an old truck. that is going to be overloaded. Honestly, there probably isn't a single limit that this person ISN'T violating. We also have no idea of the condition of the truck, over who knows what kind of terrain. No way that's being done entirely over private property. That person is towing on a public road that is about the width of the State of Ohio. A lot can go wrong on that long a trip like that. ESPECIALLY if they have to perform an emergency maneuver like hard braking, hit a big pothole, get a flat tire, etc.

Make two trips or rent a bigger truck and an appropriately sized trailer.

Telling someone that they can tow so far outside of the limit because probably nothing will go wrong is almost like telling someone to go drink and drive because they probably won't hit and kill someone else.

 

Everyone is entitled to an opinion.

I’ve stated mine.

I’ve done much worse, and don’t generally recommend doing the things I do.
But when it gets down to brass tax, what he is proposing is well within the capability of his vehicle. And that is what he asked. The trailer isn’t his. The ball mount is a valid point. Most are rated to 7500 and finding a ball rated to 10k is easy. I upgraded all of mine because of the frequency with which I was exceeding the ratings, so that’s a valid point.

In truth he really didn’t ask about anything other than his truck, and that is what I was responding to. His truck will be fine if he decides to make the trip and drives with any degree of caution.

We are taking to ourselves here anyway.

This is why I don’t usually respond to people with only a couple of posts. The hop on to ask a question and never come back

He hasn’t logged in since his second post in this thread. We aren’t helping anyone here … stick a fork in it … it’s done.

 

I wasn't really upset with you, I was more upset with the OP. Who knows, maybe it was a troll. Looking back, seeing EVERYTHING he posted about how overloaded the equipment would be...seems to be designed to get a rise out of people, and he did. Especially with me.

We've ALL done things we probably should not have. A number of years ago, my trailer brakes failed (the entire trailer had been inspected and serviced by the marina 2 months earlier and I was told everything was perfect) because the zip ties holding the brake lines to the frame failed and the bouncing pulled a long line out of the brake attachment. (and yes, looking back, if it had happened today, I would have pulled off at the next safe spot and had the boat and trailer flat bedded to a repair shop)

I am glad that it happened then for 2 reasons. I had already gotten through the mountains (it was my first long tow) and was in the mostly flat Midwest, so I was able to make it the last bit with just my truck brakes. The other is I was able to have them serviced so when I headed back home and was near Chicago, the person who zipped right in front of me and tried to brake check me (twice, once in the right lane, once on the right shoulder) to either cause an accident (or more possibly, carjack me and the boat as three large young men wearing gang colors emerged from the car walking back to me and then ran away when I said the police were on the way because they caused an accident). Thankfully, I was able to stop in time. Unfortunately, the F250 behind me wasn't and it crashed into the back of my boat. Trailer was wrecked, the prop was trashed, the dive platform was demolished....but the boat was mostly okay and because it was a F250 that hit me, he hit it on the swim platform with his grill instead of the swim platform going into the windshield/grill going into the outdrive. As a result, everyone walked away and only property was damaged. All that could be fixed.

If the brakes had failed just before that accident happened, I would not have been able to stop that suddenly to avoid hitting the brake checking/car jacking idiot.

Things happen on the roads. I was towing in my limits when these failures occurred. Fortunately, it never turned into anything worse, but it certainly could have. That's why I always tell people to stay in the limits.

Best of luck to you

 

The wise thing is to back off the trailer full load and be content to make a couple of trips.
That lowers the weight distribution to the truck and the possibility of problems going down the long hills.
Speeds over 6o mph would be suckers only and death wobbles unless you accelerate!
Taking the Winds direction and speed can be tricky there.
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Cross winds and going down long hills are the dangerous part of overweight.
We are at the Change of Season and the Winds are picking up again.