lol I kind of feel that way too. I'm all for being safe. That's why I jumped to the F250 when I originally purchsed instead of getting a 150. And then a year ago traded for the 2500 duramax. But some of the headroom in the calculations seem to be VERY inflated. Unless you 100% load your trailer to the max. Which in itself is a bad idea. So IDK
The weight quotes that [MENTION=870]Second Chance[/MENTION] was giving you are the safety numbers that are recommended to be followed. They are a combination of NTSB guidelines and truck manufacturer specifications.
Sure, you can tow a fully loaded 18,000 lbs fifth wheel with an F150. You won't make more than about 50-60 MPH (downhill) and it'll take you 10 times farther to stop the whole thing.
The CCC, or payload capacity on the door sticker is your guideline to safetly STOPPING the rig. There are several things that one can do to increase the safety stopping distance of a heavy trailer, but if for some reason you load the trailer up to the gills to carry everything, you will risk a number of things. Safety aside, you could bend the frame if you had to suddenly stop and the pin weight of the trailer, including the hitch, surpassed the CCC of the truck (it's highly unlikely, but a possibility).
In going over a bridge transition, the weight of the trailer coming down hard on the truck could bend or break the rear axle (this I've seen several times, bent the axle in the tube).
If you are in an accident, and the insurance adjustor determines that you were "severely overweight", they could deny the claim and drop you as a customer (I don't know of anyone this happened to personally but there are "stories" out there).
For me personally, I run about 100 lbs OVER my CCC in my truck and I'm in an F350 with about 3,400 lbs of CCC. My pin weight alone is 3,200. Keep in mind that we are full timers and have the washer and dryer in the closet, which is right over the pin. I am within 300 lbs of my GVWR for the coach and I'm sweating that. I am also within 50 lbs of my rear axle GVWR on the truck, which is worrysome.
To enhance stopping safety, every heavy trailer I have ever owned I have put electric-over-hydraulic disc brakes on them. On this trailer, I've only needed them once so far.
BTW, my coach is a 320MKS fifth wheel, I have a B&W Companion fifth wheel hitch that weighs about 150 lbs, I have a generator that weighs 100 lbs and all of my tools in the truck bed for a total of about 100 more lbs.
I do have the 8' bed and a crewcab 4x4, which removes about 600 lbs from the "advertised" CCC of the 2019 F350 SD.
I know my limits as a driver and know my rig very well. If I'm not comfortable with traffic, I will slow way down and let it pass me. I would rather not be the one that runs into someone because something on my rig failed and I could have prevented it.
I will say this as a last note: I have pulled 18 tons of hay on a 45' gooseneck flatbed trailer with a 1978 Ford F250. This truck was before the little yellow sticker and was never modified to handle that much weight. It pulled those 18 tons from the plains of Colorado, up I-70, into the mountains, to drop it off at a ranch near Grand Junction. I am just glad it wasn't DOWN I-70 as I never would have been able to stop it, as it was, we managed to get to only about 40 MPH going up. We did this 3 times a year. If we needed to stop that load in a hurry, we never would have been able to control it. That was back in the early 80's. Today, I would never try that as I do not want the liability of possibly injuring someone else due to my neglect.
So, the information that most of us give out is to help those who are asking (and others who are just reading) good, safe, information on towing; since we all share the same roads.
Safe travels.
