Who makes this
My name is Joseph Lawrence. I build small, single-purpose calculators for decisions where the arithmetic is annoying and everyone offering to help you has a stake in the answer.
What I am not
I am not an engineer, a mechanic, a dealer or a certified weighmaster. I hold no credentials in vehicle engineering and I am not going to imply otherwise.
What I do instead is show the work. Every calculation on this site states the rule it applies, uses figures you enter off your own vehicle, and publishes its limitations next to its result. If the answer matters — and with a trailer behind you it does — take the rig to a scale. A ticket settles in ten minutes what no website can.
Where the method comes from
The four ratings this site checks are the manufacturer’s own: payload and GVWR from the certification labels required on every vehicle sold in the United States, the front and rear GAWR from the same label, and GCWR from the manufacturer’s towing guide. Advertised tow ratings on light-duty trucks have been tested to SAE J2807 since roughly the 2015 model year.
The calculator applies those ratings to your numbers. It does not invent a formula, and where it estimates — rear-axle distribution, tongue weight percentage, how much of a weight- distribution hitch’s load transfers forward — it says so on the page and lets you change the assumption.
The one thing I will not soften
Payload varies per individual truck. Options move it by hundreds of pounds, and accessories fitted after delivery move it again without the label ever being reprinted. Any published spec table, including any figure this site might one day auto-fill for you, is an estimate. The label in your door jamb is authoritative and it overrides everything here.
How this is paid for
Display advertising, and nothing else. I do not sell leads, take referral fees from dealerships, RV brokers or hitch manufacturers, or receive anything based on which way you decide. If that ever changes it will be disclosed on the page it affects, and it will never sit on the decision a calculator advises.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, tell me and I will fix it. That is the whole policy. Contact.