We used to make a non-CDL (Commercial Driver’s License) trailer with a 16,000 lb GVWR. The littlest QuickLoadz. It was made for the mobile storage industry, for someone who wants to be able to move empty or lightly loaded containers without needing a CDL.
If you have a truck over 26,000 lbs GVWR you need a CDL. Or, if the truck GVWR and the trailer GVWR are over 26,000 lbs AND if the trailer GVWR is over 10,000 lbs you need a CDL. That is an important AND. So, you can have a 26,000 lb GVWR truck towing an 8,000 lb GVWR trailer and be fine. We used to make a two axle, four wheel, 16,000 lb GVWR trailer that people could pull with a pickup truck—a 10,000 lb truck plus a 16,000 lb trailer is less than 26,001 lbs, so it’s okay—but people constantly overloaded it. They would take a container full of plywood (the QuickLoadz would load it) then blow tires as they went down the highway. We stopped making the 16,000 GVWR trailer, which is too bad; I really liked it. You could still (literally) put a ton of stuff in the container and be fine. But it was a problem and not worth the risk of people constantly overloading it.
After telling customers for a year that we no longer make a 16,000 lb GVWR trailer, the obvious solution occurred to me. Now if someone wants a 16,000 lb GVWR trailer, we just derate the 24,000 lb GVWR trailer. By derating the same trailer to 16,000 lb GVWR, they can pull it with a pickup truck, they still have eight wheels under them, and it is a lot less likely they will overload it, blow tires, and kill someone.
