[Franco Cozzo]

Originally Posted by Crazy Dazz

Rental companies in Perth happily rent out de-rated trucks that "you can drive on a car licence"

What they don't tell you is that:

1. If you don't know WTF you're doing, and/or the biggest thing you've ever driven is an i30, then you should leave it to the professionals.
2. As soon as you load more than a few hundred kilos, you're breaking the law.
3. When you have an accident (even if you paid extra for insurance) you won't be covered.

Point being that numbers are for legal purposes.
Yes, you shoul abide by the law, but you must also consider the real-world physics.

I know a bloke who occasionally hauls his big boat out of the water for maintenance. I'd say she weighs around 3~3.5T, plus the tri-axle trailer. To haul it, he borrows a truck from work, chains a bulky in place over the rear-axle, and fills it with water. So that's an extra tonne over the axle, and he still struggles for traction if the ramp is dirty. Needless to say, he's only hauling it from Hillarys back to his property, he's not sojourning across the country.

You can buy cars with top speeds of over 300kph. (and by law your tyres must be rated accordingly) but does than mean you should? No, on most roads in Australia you would kill yourself.
Well same goes for many of the claimed tow weights.

Bingo - 7500GVM truck downrated to 4500KG, so you have a massive tray wit ha few hundred kilos of payload.

Which you inevitably exceed and are no longer covered by insurance.