06 July 08 - 22:54
Weighty Matters
Every vehicle has a maximum load weight but in our cars it rarely matters. In an RV it is very easy to load more weight than is safe. I like to be safe so I was concerned about the weight of our new RV.
Freightliner, the company whose logo is on the front of our Sprinter, says our maximum weights are:
Steer axle: 3970 lb
Drive axle: 5360 lb
Gross Weight: 8550 lb
So we loaded up the RV and took it out to Rogers, MN, on May 9, 2008, to be weighed on the truck scales there. The report came back:
Steer axle: 3940 lb
Drive axle: 4840 lb
Gross Weight: 8780 lb
Oops! So, we took nearly everything out and weighed the almost empty RV to see how much we could safely load into it. With full tanks and Dave and I inside we now weighed:
Steer axle: 3900 lb
Drive axle: 4540 lb
Gross Weight: 8440 lb
That left us 110 pounds of space available for all our household and personal goods! That would never do. So we took out the heavy stuff, substituting lighter stuff then weighed again. Now we had:
Steer axle: 3940 lb
Drive axle: 4800 lb
Gross Weight: 8740 lb
So we removed absolutely everything we could including the printer and it's shelf. The new weight was:
Steer axle: 3860 lb
Drive axle: 4500 lb
Gross Weight: 8360 lb
Finally! A number we could likely live with! So we bought a smaller printer, took out the second table and leg, removed the TV, and weighed each item we put in. By this time we were actually living in the RV and camped in Shakopee, MN, so we went to a scale there with these results.
Steer axle: 3920 lb
Drive axle: 4740 lb
Gross Weight: 8660 lb
That was different enough to make us wonder so we went back to the original scale and weighed there one last time to get:
Steer axle: 3900 lb
Drive axle: 4720 lb
Gross Weight: 8620 lb
It appeared we were never going to get under gross vehicle weight as long as we carried full tanks. So we decided we would dump black water before departing a campground and not fill fresh water until we reached the next campground. Since water weighs 8.3 lbs per gallon that should put us in the safe weight range while driving.
Reality now is that we seldom do that but we also seldom have nearly as much food as we started out with. So, when the opportunity came to have each wheel weighed individually by the Recreation Vehicle Safety Education Foundation at an RV rally in Gillette, WY, on July 5, 2008, we took it. We did not add or subtract any stuff. The tanks had what they had. We had food but not a lot. The results were:
Steer axle: 3825 lb
Drive axle: 2650 lb
Gross Weight: 8475 lb
Yay! We can go to the grocery store without risking brake failure! And the guy doing the weighing said we were more balanced left to right than any other vehicle he had weighed at the rally so we must be doing something right. But we still can't give you a ride.
TTYL,
Linda
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