Montana Tow Vehicles

[sreigle]

GVWR on my F250 is 10,000, which is more than most 1 tons on the road today. Looking at the 2006 Ford towing guide I'm seeing F350's to 13,000 per the brochure. Last week while having fuel filters changed I walked around the new trucks lot and saw an F250 with GVWR over 11,000. I'm not sure what option that was. And a dually F350 at 13,400. I think the F250 had the camper package but don't remember for sure. In any case, the 10,000 GVWR will not be exceeded by many Montanas and the 11k and above GVWR will handle any Montana including ours with 3,300 scaled pinweight. Trucks have come a long ways the past few years.

Ours has 52,000 miles on it now and still does a terrific job and uses no oil at all, even towing those 14% and 12% grades we did recently. The brakes are also larger than most 1 tons as is the frame. I am over GVWR and that is the one reason why next time I'll probably go with a 1 ton. However, there is nothing illegal about being over GVWR so I don't worry about it. Actually, there is one legal issue in some states - that is the registration fees and/or taxes are based (in some states) on the weight rating of your truck so if you're over that then you didn't pay enough to the state. When I asked in Kansas about this I was told they don't care so long as I pay for the truck's rating. That was admittedly several years ago though.

[Cat320]

Steve, thanks for the comments. Here's part of what I said in my OP:

"I've talked to an atty and the ins co...bottom line is that we could open ourselves up to serious liability issues if driving an over weight vehicle and are involved in at fault accident."

So I'm already 'worried' about it...if I wasn't concerned I would not have asked the original question and just gone out and purchased the 3/4 ton...that I prefer. Re your set up. I'm not that familiar with Ford, but a Chevy 2500HD diesel with a PW of 3300# would be at least 1000# over GVWR. Your statement saying there is nothing illegal with being overweight is, IMHO, without foundation...see the comments by the atty and ins guy in my OP quoted above. As you can imagine...I'm leaning toward a dually. It will be a pain in town when not towing, but I think it's what I need to do the job and stay within all factory limits.