> So someone in Kansas or Florida should be limited by grades that aren't even with a day's drive of them? Do you seriously believe this? I never said that. I

> So someone in Kansas or Florida should be limited by grades that aren't even with a day's drive of them? Do you seriously believe this? I never said that. I think the current tow rating system does represent the safety margins needed in real world towing. If a truck can't tow X pounds up an actual hill on an actual US highway, then it shouldn't advertise being able to tow X pounds. But, if you live in Kansas and you are sure that your brakes can handle a higher load, that's fine. As you said, it's up to you the driver to know what's safe and not. I also think you have it coming if you lose control of an overloaded truck and your insurance company refuses to cover damages, etc. I view it similar to overclocking a server. Servers are clocked somewhat conservatively to ensure reliability. You are free to overclock a machine you own, but you run the risk of instability and you cannot complain to the manufacturer if you have downtime resulting from running your machine outside of spec.