In this episode of Drive Radio – The Extra Mile, John Rush breaks down one of the most overlooked—but most important—parts of your vehicle: the driver-side door sticker.
What seems like a simple label actually holds critical information about your vehicle’s limits, including GVWR (gross vehicle weight rating), axle ratings, manufacturing details, and more. John explains how to read these numbers and why they matter, especially when hauling gear, adding accessories, or towing.
Using real-world examples, the episode highlights how quickly payload capacity disappears once you factor in passengers, aftermarket upgrades, and everyday cargo. From overland builds to work trucks, many
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This is Drive Radio, The Extra Mile, with your host, John Rush.
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welcome back another edition of drive radio the extra mile i say welcome back because a lot of you keep listening each and every week so i appreciate that greatly i know that because you guys send text messages and emails and inquiries as that show is going on it’s always always fun when i have a show going on because i typically know because the text line is very active and it’s really funny because there’s times where i forget about replays and things like that and All of a sudden, they’re playing, and I’m all of a sudden getting text messages, which, again, this is not a complaint. That’s just telling you guys how it works, and I always know when something is on because you guys are all very active. Let’s just say it that way. And I appreciate that greatly, by the way. Today’s topic, again, comes from – I don’t remember if I got an email or a text message on this. I think this one was an email coming out of the Drive Radio show itself. And Mike is the one that actually sent this in. So, Mike, thank you for this one. He wanted me to go over and talk about the door sticker, the door jam sticker, which on early, early vehicles, there wasn’t one. I’ll explain some of that as I get into this. But since, gosh, as long as I can remember now on modern vehicles, the door jam sticker has been there. And there’s some important information on it. And most people have no idea what it means. what it’s for anything along those lines when i say it’s been there for a really long time i remember being a a very young man boy i wasn’t even a man yet young boy because i started working at the at my family’s dealership when i was about 12. so i wasn’t a man yet i was a boy a very young boy actually and but being taught the information that was on that sticker at a very early age because there’s things on there you know for example Not only is the VIN number of the vehicle, which should match the VIN number that’s on the dash itself that you can see through the windshield. And by the way, that one can never be tampered with. It’s against the law to do so. The door sticker can’t be either. It’s a little different scenario there than the plate, the VIN plate itself. But the point being, they should match. So your VIN number should match that plate that’s up on the dash, and the door sticker should be the same. And I’ll go through this in detail, but one of the things I learned early, because being in a car dealership was very important to know how much warranty was left on a car. Because cars are done in warranties, and back then when I started, believe it or not, it was only 12 and 12. 12 months, 12,000 miles. That’s all you got. That was it. Cars weren’t as good. They weren’t built as well as they are today. I keep saying that, and I get some people that will even get on the text line or on Facebook and disagree with me. Well, if they’re… If they’re… As good as they used to be, the old ones were better than these new ones, I should say. In other words, if we haven’t come a long way, why is the warranty better? When I was a kid, it was 12 and 12. I grew up in a GM dealership, 12 and 12. Now, the reason why it was important to know when the car was made was because that had to do with how long the warranty was still good. So in other words, if today is March the 30th, I’m recording this on Monday of this week, and if you had a 12-month, 12,000-mile warranty, and it’s March 30th of 2026, that car couldn’t have been built after March 30th of 2025. Duh. Or if it’s a three-year, 36,000-mile warranty, so it can’t be built past March 30th of 2023 if it’s a three and 36. And that’s why that date code that’s in that door sticker becomes so important. There’s times I’ll ask somebody, when was it made? They look at you like, well, I don’t know. Well, everybody can find this out. In fact, this is one of those items where, and I should do this. I’m as guilty as anybody. I should do this. Now that I’m thinking about this, I will. You know, I keep important, you know, I’m an Apple guy, and Apple has a system called Notes, and Notes works really well, and it’s a good way to store things. Stuff’s in the cloud, makes it easy to retrieve and find and so on. And I know there’s fancier ways to do this, but I just make a note of certain things that I need to keep track of. For example, I keep a copy of my driver’s license. Front and back. If somebody ever needs it, bank, somebody, I can just go right there, send it off, done deal. I do that with my passports. I do that with other important things that I need to keep track of. Well, what you really should do is take a picture and keep track of your door sticker in much the same way. Because there may be times, especially for some of you guys that are do-it-yourselfers, there may be times you’re trying to look up a part for something and you need to know what was the manufacturer date of that? When was my car made? Because believe it or not, some of you, most of you believe this because it’s like anything else, appliances and so on. When it’s made in a year can have a lot to do with what vendor was supplying parts at any given point during that year. So that delivery date keeps… How should I say it? It keeps things straight is probably the best way to say it. And again, this isn’t even in my notes. I’m just taking that one as a first shot just because it’s an important thing that’s on that sticker. I should have taken a copy of my door sticker and then went over it with all of you guys. I’ve got samples here, but… But we’ll go through this. And, again, this is a topic that’s come off of the text line, emailed in. And if there’s something that you want me to cover in more depth, I know I say this a lot, but you guys are utilizing this, so thank you. In fact, I’ve gotten several really nice, positive comments from those of you that are listeners, which, you know, those are always heartwarming. I really can’t say it any other way. They really are. And, man, some of you are like, you know what, you’re giving out information in that hour that you can’t find anywhere else. Even on some of the influencers and social media and YouTube and so on, you just don’t find the same type of information. And nothing against any of those guys, by the way. I’ve talked about some of that in the past, and maybe I’ll even do another show on that in the future in regards to who do you really trust and who do you not trust when it comes to the influencers. Some of the guys are really sharp, and they’re really smart, and they really do get it. On the same token, there’s some not-so-smart, not-so-sharp guys out there that really have no idea what they’re talking about. Real quick, let me give you one example. And I’ll do a whole segment on this, or a whole hour on this. But really quick, I want to give an example. Somebody sent me today, and I might as well talk about it because it’s going to play this week. It’s really popular right now. Be careful, the government’s diluting your fuel. That was the headline. And one of you sent me this through the text line. Be careful, the government’s diluting your fuel. Well, okay, time out. First of all, no, they’re not. They’re not diluting anything. Donald Trump, and I’ve talked about this on my daily show. I didn’t talk about it much on Drive Radio, but let me cover it here. What Donald Trump has agreed to do is run E instead of E10. He’s allowing the petroleum companies to run E15. And I could probably get an actual petroleum engineer, somebody on that understands the production sides of things. But my gut feeling is that extra 5%, is it going to make or break the bank at the end of the day? Probably not. But does it help out on the supply side of things with what’s happening in Iran and the price of a barrel of oil and so on? Is there some reprieve with that? Yes, there is. Now, some of you would say, well, no, there’s not, because you get worse fuel economy. And the guy that I’m talking about, by the way, that says that the government is diluting your fuel, he was somewhat right. And this is where it gets really interesting with these guys. He was a little bit right, but a lot wrong in what he was saying. Because, again, it’s not diluted fuel. It’s 5% more alcohol than it was with E10. That’s it, folks, 5%. And I think it’s a lot to do about nothing. I think the majority of vehicles, even those that they claim won’t run on E15 will. And I’ve heard everybody talk about, you know, the small engine guys don’t run anything other than just straight, no ethanol, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I’ll be honest, folks, I don’t shop around for fuel. I buy whatever’s at the pump. I run it in all the different things that I have, and I have no issues. And we do the same thing in our business. So there’s a lot of fallacies going on when it comes to that end of things, and that was just an example that I gave you a moment ago. And I’ll talk more about the whole E15 end of things here as we go through some of our future shows because I don’t think it’s going to go away. They’re going to run it all the month of May. So an entire month, they’re going to run that to help offload some of that pressure that’s on the fuel companies right now. So let’s talk about the door sticker. And as I said earlier, where is it located? Because some of you probably, I don’t think I’m exaggerating, Luke, when I say this. Well, let me ask you this. Luke, do you know where this is? Yes. Perfect.
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I know where it is. I have an interesting, I guess, maybe a small piece of, I needed to buy new tires, and there’s the tire information in there.
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Yes, that’s a separate sticker. You’re correct.
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I got kind of tweaked by this a little bit. I didn’t know that the owner of my vehicle had replaced the rims with aftermarket rims, so I referenced that little door sticker, hoping to find my accurate information, only to realize that it had changed up on me, so…
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Okay, so there’s an example of where utilizing that can help you. And Luke just gave another great point. I want to make sure that we’re clear on this. It is not the tire inflation tire guide sticker. These are two separate stickers. There’s a couple stickers in there. That’s right, two separate stickers. And they’re typically on the driver’s door jam, not on the door. I believe by law has to be on the jam because doors can be changed. The jam cannot. And I don’t know if a sticker gets damaged or if there’s a wreck or whatever, if the stickers can even be reordered. Honestly, that’s something I don’t know much about, never really looked at, never had a need to. Never been an issue on my end, so I never really paid much attention to that. But here’s where it’s located. Typically, it’s at the rear of the door jamb. And sometimes, depending upon the car, the model of the car and so on, Sometimes if it’s a four-door car, for example, you may need to open both doors to see the sticker fully. In most cases, you should be able to open the driver’s door, read the sticker. It’s there so even law enforcement can read it if they need to. It’s a really quick reference to several things on your vehicle. That’s typically where it’s located. Now, most of you have probably seen it and ignored it. That’s what we do. We climb in and out. The sticker’s there. You don’t even know it’s there. You don’t know what it says. You don’t care what it says. And you know what? For most of you, that’s probably okay. to but for a lot of you i think it really is important to know what is on that sticker and what does it mean so again your 17 digit vin number vehicle identification number that’s what vin stands for the 17 digit number which is essentially your car’s fingerprint that will be on there as well and that’s again it’s a good idea to just take a picture of the door sticker I think I have a picture of one of my cars. I’d have to roll back through all of my pictures to find it. But it’s a good thing to have a copy of, especially when you’re trying to reference things regarding your car, parts and things along those lines. So anyways, that’s where it’s located. It’s important to have that, making sure that, of course, your registration, your insurance, everything matches. And this is something else to even check with. I’ve never talked about this one either. But on the insurance company, make sure the VIN number you give them matches. People can make mistakes all the time. They can make typos and so on. One digit off and it’s not the same car. So make sure that everything does in fact match. I’ve given you guys stories about a situation I had one time where nothing matched because we got delivered the wrong truck. It had all the right paperwork, but wrong truck. And they were basically twin sister trucks. And one truck went one way and the other truck went the other way. And it was a major debacle getting all of that straightened back out. So anyways, double check. Make sure that all your paperwork, if you have a car that’s paid for, your title, your lien, whatever you get from the finance company, your registration, you name it. Make sure all of those things match when it comes to the VIN number because it’s really important that they do. Now, one of the things that the VIN number does is, And really quick, too, you can now, easiest thing to do is go to any AI, ChatGPT, Claude, Gronk, Gemini, whatever you want to use. Pick your poison. I don’t care. Take your VIN and just say, break this down for me. There’s all kind of VIN decoding devices out there, but you don’t need those anymore. ChatGBT and all of the AIs will do this for you faster than you can go out and even find somebody that’ll do a VIN decode that’s not an ad. That’s not trying to sell you, here’s the information I found on your car. You can go to AI and they’ll do it for you. And what it tells you in that VIN is, number one, what is it? Who made it? When was it made? Not the delivery date or the manufacturer date. But what year was it made in? Typically, we’ll tell you even, you know, what engine does it come with? In some cases, the trim level and things like that. Those are all in that main bulk of the VIN number. Then the last digits are the sequence of how many cars they made. That’s how that works. And again, that VIN, it’s a really good idea to have that because there are going to be times where, is there a recall on my car? I thought there might have been. Okay, grab the VIN, go to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or AI, either one, plug the VIN in and say, is there any recalls on this? Is there any open recalls? Typically, it will tell you. And the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will for sure. So, again, having a copy of that door sticker with the VIN number and everything on it is a really good idea. And, again, helps decode lots of things, especially for those of you that are do-it-yourselfers where you’re trying to figure out what part do I need. That door sticker really gives you a lot of great useful information when it’s all said and done. Okay, we’re going to take a break here in a second. come back and one of the things i want to talk about i think why this dovetailed into what we talked about the last couple of weeks on trailer towing rvs and so on is this door sticker is now going to give us some really important information in regards to what i just said a moment ago so hang with us we’re going to be right back again texas any questions that you’ve got 307-282-22 307-282-22 this is drive radio the extra mile right here on klz 560.
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This program was recorded earlier for broadcast at this time. No phone calls can be accepted.
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And we’re Back Drive Radio, the Extra Mile, KLZ 560. Thanks again for listening. And the text line once more, 307-200-8222. So the door sticker also gives you the GVWR, gross vehicle weight rating. And it will tell you what is the maximum total weight that your vehicle can handle. In other words, the vehicle itself, the passengers, the cargo. So, for example, if a vehicle has a 6,800-pound GVWR and the truck weighs 5,200 pounds empty, well, do the math. That means you can carry with passengers and everything 1,600 pounds. When people figure this, especially guys at… trailer places, camper places, and so on, they’ll usually look at that and say, well, you can carry 1,600 pounds. Well, that’s a correct statement, by the way. But what they forget to leave out is that includes you, your gear, your passengers, whatever junk you keep behind the seat all the time. You get where I’m going with this. In other words, let’s just say that this is your hunting vehicle, and you’re going to take three of your hunting buddies with you, and you’re going to head up the hill. Now, in doing so, let’s say all your buddies, by the way, maybe we all like to eat, and let’s say each one of them weighs 250 pounds, and you include it. Okay, we’ve got 1,000 pounds of passengers in the vehicle, and we haven’t put any gear in yet. See where I’m going with this, folks? The passengers alone are over half of what the remaining carrying capacity the truck has, and yet you want to go stick another 1,600 pounds in the back. That’s not how this works. And that’s why the door sticker is important, because it tells you, are you going to be overloaded or not? So in the case of the example I just gave, you’ve got three of your hunting buddies. They each weigh 250 pounds each. You weigh 250, which, by the way, everybody thinks, man, that’s really fat. There’s a lot of guys that weigh 250, by the way. You get a big old boy that’s 6’2″, 6’3″, and likes to have his steak and potatoes, and he’s going to weigh 250 pretty easily. So four of you with no gear, you haven’t put anything else in yet. Not your any of your hunting stuff, your guns, nothing. There’s nothing else in there. Not the extra tire change you might want to take with you. Not the extra tools, not the not the toe strap. Get where I’m going with this. Oh, by the way, not including the winch you just threw on and and and. OK, everybody forgets about these things adding on to the weight when they put even the accessories on the truck. Oh, what about the bed cover you just put on? What about the camper show you just put on? They all forget about that. Oh, the truck can hold 1,600 pounds. Well, yeah, it can, as long as you’re doing the math correctly. So now we’re down to it can hold 600 pounds. And some are like, well, that’s quite a bit of weight. Well, not really. Not really. When you think about it, it adds up pretty fast. So you’re not putting a lot of extra weight. And keep in mind, if you’re going to go throw a trailer on it, now you’re talking about a 600-pound tongue weight max. That’s it. That’s it. Now, there’s another figure on here that talks about how much you can haul. We’ll get into that in a minute. But this is just gross vehicle weight rating. What will the vehicle haul on its own? No trailer, no nothing, just standalone. And those numbers are there. And my point with this is most people, most people never look at this sticker to even know what will it actually carry and what will it not. Right? Does that make sense? I hope it does to people, because most people never look at what’s going on in this regard. They just they sort of assume, well, my truck will do X, Y, Z. Well, will it now? I mean, will it? I mean, yeah, it might. But is it going to do it the way that it’s supposed to do it when it’s all said and done? And again, if you have any questions along these lines, I’ve had people at times in the past and I’m always willing to do this. I’ve had people in the past where literally they will take a picture of their door sticker, send it to me and say, this is what I’m thinking about doing and hauling. And I will be like, yeah, you’re not going to be OK or you will be OK. You get where I’m going with this. In other words, there’s there’s a little more to this than just meets the eye. So, once again, figure out, you know, know where the door sticker is, know what some of these ratings are when it’s all said and done, so that as you’re going through the sticker, you know exactly what it’s doing. So, for example, here’s another sticker I found. GVWR of the whole vehicle is $99.90. Okay, so 999. Now, this is a truck I own, and I’ve never weighed the truck, but I’m guessing this truck empty probably weighs, it’s a diesel, so it’s probably going to weigh somewhere around 5,000 pounds, maybe 5,500. So now, again, do the math. And you can now determine how much can I carry in said vehicle. If it weighs even 6,000 pounds, that’s giving me 3,900 pounds, almost 4,000 pounds left over that I can now haul around. Now, if I throw my buddies in it and there’s 1,000 pounds of us driving around, now I can haul 3,000 pounds. This is the drill. And what I’m trying to get you guys to think about is that’s the drill. That’s how things work. But you have to know this. Otherwise, what happens is trucks get overloaded. And that’s when you start having issues with, gosh, towing, braking in time, wear and tear on suspension and brake components and even, you know, axles themselves and so on. I mean, it just goes down the list to transmissions itself and so on. All of that adds up. And. I had a conversation with a good friend. I’m not going to give any names out because I don’t want to throw this person under the bus. But it’s somebody, if I mention this, you would know. And he has a business truck. And it’s a lighter, you know, 150, 1500 series truck. And has worked fairly well. It’s about 90,000 miles or so, and now we’re starting to have a few issues on the truck. And what I’m going to tell you is the issues on the truck is because it’s loaded with about 1,500 to 2,000 pounds constantly. And it’s an F-150. Now, most would say, well, it can haul that. Well, I’d have to read the door sticker to even know how much it can haul after all of the other things inside the cab are there, plus now the apparatus that’s in the back of the truck. And here’s my point. It may very well be able to haul what’s there and be right underneath the GVWR, but because we don’t have any cushion, we’re now replacing things at a higher rate than what we would be if we just went and bought, in this case, a three-quarter ton truck. You know, an F-250, a 2500, whatever, you know, pick your poison. Now, on that sticker, and I was just mentioning this in the sticker that I was just talking about a moment ago, the max weight, by the way, that each axle can support, it will tell you the front GAWR and the rear GAWR. That’s gross axle weight rating. That’s what GAWR stands for. That’s on the sticker as well, especially on trucks. Now, a lot of cars, you’re not going to see this on cars because they’re not hauling anything. But you get into any truck at all that has the ability to haul something, tow something, and you’re going to find that. Even some of the larger, not even larger, midsize SUVs may very well have this. So gross axle weight rating, meaning that you may be wanting to haul, and let’s go back to the truck I was talking about, that extra 3,000 pounds. Okay, well, is that all over the rear axle, and does that rear axle not have the capacity? that’s where you’ve got to read the quote-unquote fine print of what this door sticker actually says and what you have the ability to do. Because distributing that weight out correctly so that you’ve got the load on front and rear respectively, I should say, makes a huge difference. So we want to distribute the load out, and that G-A-W-R will tell you all of that. Now… There’s also tire size and pressure info. Again, typically they’ve now moved that into its own sticker. It’s typically not on the same sticker. Now, sometimes it is, and I’ve seen door stickers where the tire size itself and pressures are on that main sticker, and there’s even an additional sticker that’s highlighted. And I’d have to go back and look history-wise, because I don’t have this off the top of my head, as to when they started doing the secondary air fill, air pressure thing. Because when I was a kid growing up in the dealership, there was the door sticker. That was it. There wasn’t anything in there at that time about tires. That came later. I don’t know when. I didn’t bother to look that up prior to today’s program. So I don’t know. If some of you do, you’re more than welcome to share that, and I’ll share it in one of the future episodes or even on Drive Radio. But that secondary sticker says a lot as well. To Luke’s point a moment ago, what did it come with? In other words, did it come with 18s or 20s or 22s or 21s? You know, what was on the vehicle originally? And not saying that you have to run the original wheel and tire combo, but it is important to know what did it actually come with. Also tells you what the cold inflation should be. And then on top of that, of course, it’s not really going to tell you much when it comes to, you know, tread life, tread wear, any of that kind of stuff. That’s all printed on the side of the tire. Now, where that, I need to throw this in really quick. Where some of this gets wonky is you, like Luke, you change wheel and tire. Or somebody changes wheel and tire. What you now have for pressure settings may be way different than the sticker. For example, let’s say you buy, we’ll go back to the F-150, that most likely comes with, depending upon the truck and the GVWR and so on, it might only come with four-ply tires. It might be P-series tires. And a lot of times they do that because, A, it costs less money. B, the ride is better. That’s typically why they do it is the ride is better. P means passenger. LT means light truck. So there’s a lot of guys out there, when they go to do their first tire replacement, they will move from the P Series to the LT Series. And depending upon what load rating you get on that LT Series, it could be 6, 8, or 10 ply, will have a lot to do with what the pressure setting should be for the tire itself, and you will not use the door sticker if you do that, is my point. Now, where it gets a little bit, again, weird and wonky is the vehicle and the tire pressure monitoring system was set at one particular spec. And if you go in and add an LT series tire and you’re going to run a higher pressure, that may be outside of the parameters of the TPMS system. When the light turns on and off, that would be one of those things to consider before going out and adding wheels, tires and all of that. In fact, what I’m just talking about right now is almost I should probably put this in my notes that whole. wheel-tire combo, what you should run and not run. Literally, I could spend an entire hour on that topic alone. And the mistakes that are made by a lot of individuals, especially guys that are with bigger rigs, bigger trucks, and so on, and what a mistake it is for them to get away from the factory setup that was already there. And yet, they do it all the time. All right, I talked about this a little bit earlier, but we’re going back to the regular door sticker. The manufacturing date, the month, and the year that it was built. And, again, as I said earlier, it reminds us or helps us identify when was the vehicle made. Was it early in the year, late in the year? And, folks, I’m not joking you. I’ve been on all facets of the automotive world, and if you’re the parts guy looking at parts, Sometimes that actual date, so five of whatever, I just used the 23 a moment ago. So five of 23, anything that or before takes X part. Anything after that takes this part. And I think this is where, you know, not to defend all the shops and everything they do and so on because there’s some really great shops out there and there’s some not so great shops out there, and I understand that fully. But I think shops get a bad rap sometimes on some of the pricing and charges that they have, and yet what am I going through right now? And remember, when that person goes to order the part, they’re going through the same thing. And some of you guys are like, well, that’s all automated. No, this isn’t. No. There are some cases, depending upon the car and where that cutoff is, you’re actually on the phone talking to a parts person for who knows how long. It could be 15, 20 minutes to find out if we’re going to get the right part or not because there’s some idiosyncrasy with whatever it is you’re working on. And repair shops don’t get enough credit for what I just said because at the end of the day, you get the right part. You get things fixed properly. You’re motoring on down the road, and you don’t have to hassle with anything. What’s that worth to you? Now, for some, they would be like, well, none of that’s worth anything. I want it as cheap as I possibly can. Well, then do it yourself. Have fun. Do it yourself. And in some cases, maybe you can. In other cases, you can’t. I’ll really quickly give you an example. I had somebody that sent me – this is not being critical, by the way, so if it’s you that sent me this, please don’t think I’m not dogging at you. But I had somebody ask me the other day about where to find a good engine for an XYZ vehicle. And I’m like, well, give me one second. So I did a little bit of nosing around. I’m like, well, there’s plenty of good engines in town. The next question was, will any of them deliver? I said, I doubt any of them will deliver. Typically, when you’re doing engines, transmissions, things like that, as a shop, you have a service truck that you then utilize to go pick up something like this that you can now haul back to your shop, unload, make sure it is what was said it was, and run through everything properly, and then install it into the vehicle that it came out of. You see where I’m going with this, folks? It makes it sound really easy. Well, you just have the engine dropped off. Well, no, no one does that. And I don’t blame them for that because there’s lots of reasons why you wouldn’t want to offer that service. But this particular texter thought, okay, how do I get that engine delivered to me? And then my next question was, who’s putting it in? Are you? Do you have enough skill set to put this in yourself? Otherwise, why have it delivered at the house? Well, no, I’m going to hire this out. Well, we just did everything backwards. If you’re going to do something along those lines, I know I’m slipping this in, but it does go along with a door sticker and ordering parts and so on. But if you’re going to do something like what this particular person wanted to do, I mean, again, knock your socks off, be my guest, do whatever you want to do. Just remember that that shop that this engine may be getting delivered to, do they have space? Can they accept it when it shows up? Were they a part of the process of ordering it from this particular vendor? Is it the better of the vendors? Because remember, in this case, you’re buying an engine. How good is that engine when it’s all said and done is my point. Depending upon who the seller is, you may not know. You may not know. So anyways, going back to the door stickers, a few more things I want to cover here. One thing also, depending upon, this goes back to the whole parts ordering end of things, the country of origin. So did it come from USA? Did it come from Mexico? Canada? Was it a foreign vehicle? Did this vehicle come out of Asia? Where was this made? And some would say, well, why does that matter? Well, because in some cases, the parts sourcing alone makes a huge difference as to whether it was one version versus another as far as where it’s made. And then frankly, on top of that, some of this goes back to the wholesale sides of things. Some people don’t want to buy anything that wasn’t made here. And you need to know, was it or wasn’t it? Again, I’m not a big one on that anymore, parts apart, as long as it’s good quality. I don’t really care where it comes from. If I can buy it in America, will I? Yes. But is that my gold standard? No, it is not. No, it was not. Now, something that – this is interesting. On the door sticker, there will be the paint code and the trim code. And some of you are thinking, well, why would I ever need that? Oh, you want to touch the car up? No. you got a few little rock chips and things like that or you just you know somebody dinged your door and made a big old mark and you don’t want to have that start rusting and you want to touch that up with some paint touch up paint having the trim code makes a world of difference if you want the touch of paint to actually blend and look like it’s supposed to and not be an eyesore Touching up vehicles is its own deal as well. In fact, I could do a whole hour just on paint touch-up and all of the idiosyncrasies of that. There’s a lot to it. And by the way, there are some people that are really, really good at it and some that are not. But that’s one thing. The factory paint code, what the vehicle came with, will be there, and it will tell you what it is. The interior trim, same thing. And then this says here, why does it matter? Because of touching up, repairing, et cetera. So the collision centers are going to use this full well, which they should, as needed, I guess is what I should say. The other thing that door sticker does, by the way, is tells you whether it’s compliant or not. There’s a lot of gray market cars out in the public, I guess I should say. And do all of those meet the guidelines? No. I’ll tell you straight up right now, no, they do not. Some probably don’t meet it at all. Does it mean you don’t buy it? That’s your call. But when you go to do things with that vehicle, you may run into some issues, like I just said, in regards to finding the right parts and pieces and trim pieces and so on, because all of that can change from, again, manufacturer to manufacturer, country of origin and so on. And then on top of that, is this vehicle really safe to be sold in the United States of America? Will it comply? Okay. Because quite frankly, if it won’t, it’s not worth as much as one that would. And nothing against some of you guys that have noncompliant vehicles, because some of you do have. You were lucky and you knew what hoops to jump through to get this thing done and handled and plated and so on. Not everybody has that same ability, so just remember that. Lastly, really quick, I’ll talk about there’s a barcode, and a lot of dealerships now are actually just scanning the car in. Even independent repair shops are doing the same thing. So as you pull up, you get your little scanner out, your barcode scanner out, and pop it in. Everything I’m talking about is already now in the computer, ready to go. Piece of cake. And again, some would say, well, why would I want that? Because it just makes things that much easier. And guess what? The accuracy is better now. No one’s transposing numbers. There’s no, you know, a five for an S or things along those lines. And by the way, there are also certain things in a VIN number that you’ll never see. There’s certain letters even in a VIN you’ll never see because they get confused. So they sort of, you know, quote, unquote, outlawed them from the VIN system because it’s one of those things that’s really hard to distinguish. Is this this or that? So, again, side note, that’s the breakdown on the sticker. And if you’re – well, let me do this. We’re up against another break. Let me talk about how this really comes into play, even on some accessories and things that you may want to add in. And I think Mike, when he really wanted me to run this, really wanted me to talk about some of that because guys can overload, well – Tacoma, a taco. I saw one today coming down to the station that I guarantee you probably was overloaded and he didn’t put anything… There’s no room to put anything else on the truck that’s already overloaded, guaranteed. It’s probably overloaded even just him as the driver. So… We’ll do this. We’ll come right back. I’ll continue on. Drive Radio the Extra Mile. Again, we do this every single Saturday from 3 to 4 p.m. And if you want to send us a text message and ask any questions or think of another topic that you’d like us to cover, I can do that as well. 307-200-8222 is the text line. This is Drive Radio the Extra Mile right here on KLZ 560.
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SPEAKER 05 :
This program was recorded earlier for broadcast at this time. No phone calls can be accepted.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right, welcome back. Drive Radio, The Extra Mile. Again, heard every Saturday right here, 3 to 4 p.m. on KLZ Radio. And if you need anything, and I mean this sincerely, anything, this is not a live call-in show. Luke Cashman and I usually do this show either on Mondays or Tuesdays. Just depends on the week. This particular week, you will notice that there was a – how should I say this? I’m going to think about when I’m going to run this particular show because I’m gone for two weeks in a row. But the guys at Ridgeline are going to fill in one week, and then I’ll be back. So I’ll figure that whenever this is playing, just know that I recorded this today. Luke and I did on March the 30th. And this door sticker topic, it carries on for – it’s timeless because these aren’t going – they’re not going anywhere. Let’s put it that way. All right. Back to, you know, why are these important? And this, I think, goes back to, you know, Mike and his reasoning for me wanting to cover this in the first place. And that is, I’ll use that Toyota that I just saw on my way down here. So Toyota Tacoma, which I’d have to go look and see what the GVW are. Well, I guess I probably could do this really quick. Hold on. Let me get AI open up here really quick, guys. And let me see really quick. Let me see what the GVW are. This is a new one. So GVW are. on a, let’s do this, 2025 Toyota Tacoma. Because I don’t think it was brand new, but it’s new enough that we should be able to look at this. Total gross vehicle weight rating, and it depends on whether it’s the hybrid version, the double cab, or the base. So let’s go the full-bore hybrid, the I-Force Max. Total on the vehicle is anywhere from 6,665 to 6,835. So let’s go in between those, and let’s just say it’s 6,700 pounds. Okay? Okay. Now, here’s the next thing I’m going to look up is, well, it already gave me this. Great. Thank you, AI. So that Tacoma typically weighs 4,500 pounds. 4,500 pounds, meaning, and it says it right here in front of me, you’ve got 1,200 to 1,500 pounds of payload, and that’s it. Nothing else. Now, I saw a Tacoma today that had the extra heavy-duty steel front and rear bumpers, okay? So you took off a bumper that probably didn’t weigh 15 pounds and now put one on it that probably weighs 75 pounds, 75 to 100, depending upon which one you use. Oh, and now you add a winch. Well, there’s another 50 pounds, easy. Oh, and then you did the back bumper. Okay, there we go. That’s another one. Oh, we have a rack in the back that’s over the top of the bed that’s got the whole camper tent thing up on top. This is an overland type rig, so now you’ve got all of that. Oh, now he’s got four jerry cans, one mounted to each post, which Luke and I would have to sit and do the math on all of that to see what that weighs. Oh, wait a minute. Now he’s also got those ladder things. If you get stuck in the snow or whatever, you throw those plastic things down. You can drive on those. Of course, they have weight to them as well.
SPEAKER 03 :
Haven’t even added a passenger yet.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, thank you, Luke. There’s no one riding in the vehicle yet. I’m just tallying up all the different things that we’ve now been adding, and I’m looking at, okay, we’ve got about 100 pounds here, 100 pounds there, another probably 300 pounds there, so now we’re three, four, five. So we’re 600 pounds out of the 1,200-pound roughly payload, and no one’s driving yet. And let’s say the dude driving it weighs 200 pounds. Well, now we’re 400 pounds that you can put in the vehicle. Oh, and by the way, I didn’t figure in the gas cans and the water cans that he’s got on each one of the posts. So point being, this guy is basically at his max, and he has no passengers yet. He hasn’t thrown his wife, the kids, the dog, nothing in the car yet, meaning when he does, he’s overloaded. And here’s the thing, folks, and I was in the aftermarket world forever. I had two off-road stores. We did four-wheel drive truck accessories, high-performance gear, regular maintenance on regular vehicles, but we did all of the things I just mentioned. And here’s what I will tell you. You can add anything to a truck. Nobody’s stopping you. You can buy all of the components that I just mentioned and go home and throw them on. In fact, there’s a lot of shops out there that will throw all the things on I just talked about. And they’re relying on you to figure out what’s the leftover payload you can throw in any of these things I just talked about. Because every single thing you add to the truck, from that overhead camper thing I just talked about, the big box that unfolds, to all of your tools you throw in, to the heavy-duty front winch bumper, to the back heavy-duty bumper that’s now on there, to the ladder rack system that’s on top, all of those things add up. And what most people don’t do is they don’t add any of that up. They just look at, well, I carry 1500 pounds. Well, no, really, you can’t. Because you just used up at least half, if not more of that in all of the apparatuses I just talked about. And then you wonder why I’ve got, you know, axle seals that give out too soon or my brakes don’t feel like they should or my tires wear faster than they should or, or, or I go down the list. And it starts to add up. And again, in this particular scenario, there’s no room for a trailer or anything else because it’s already maxed. It’s done. So this is where knowing the door sticker, using that in sort of these, you know, real world experiences, I guess you could say that I’m talking about, becomes so important because the last thing you want to do is overload the vehicle. And it’s easy to do. Easy to do. I have seen, when I was, Luke will laugh at this, when I was a young boy, again, working in the dealership, starting out, we had a particular fleet company, I won’t say the name, that you used to do business with, and they had about a 72 Chevy pickup, half ton, that was so overloaded with steel in the back of the bed, and I’m not joking you, that it came in with two lug studs, not nuts, the stud, the nut, everything, it’s gone. They’re sheared. They’re broken off. And you literally, we pulled that rig into the shop, and as we were doing so, it was popping studs, and people were afraid to even stand next to it because it was shooting them across the shop. Because of how much weight was in the back. I’m not exaggerating, Luke. That is one of those scenes when you always go back in time and think of certain things in your life that you will never, ever, ever forget. For me, that is one of those.
SPEAKER 03 :
Bringing a live hand grenade into the shop.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, basically, yes. I’ll never forget watching those studs go flying across the shop and guys running. It was kind of funny, but it wasn’t. And it was so heavy. We had two post-hydraulic lifts back in the day. They didn’t have the above-ground stuff like we have today. Everything was in-ground. It wouldn’t lift the truck up. You couldn’t pick it up. We had to go get two floor jacks. Back then, they were the real heavy-duty four-ton floor jacks. And we had to get two of those, one on each side of the axle, to be able to raise it up to even start working on things. And at that point, it was like, we can’t even put studs in this until somebody comes and starts unloading some of the steel, or we’re just going to break the new ones that we put in. Now, was that truck overloaded? Yes, it was. Was it still carrying the load? In other words, did it fit in the bed of the truck? Oh, it did, yes. And I’ve used this example, and we used this even a few weeks ago, but I want to make sure I remind everybody of this one again. Let me use this example. When you have a pickup bed especially, and you put material in the back, remember, the denser the material, the smaller, is what I’m trying to say, the heavier it is. Now, I get it, you know, rock and things like that. There’s a certain amount of weight there depending upon even what type of rock you have. But remember, you could take, and I’m not talking about the weight because a ton is a ton is a ton. It doesn’t matter if it’s a ton of feathers or whether it’s a ton of gravel. I get it, a ton is a ton. But when you’re, in a lot of cases, just going to the supply place and saying fill the bed, there’s a big difference between a bed full of river rock and a bed full of sand. The sand will weigh more because it’s much more dense. In fact, think about sand this way. You could load the back of the pickup truck up with the river rock and still probably put half a load of sand in because it’s going to filter down through the river rock. So my point is be really careful with the way you’re factoring and figuring these things in because stuff adds up really fast, and the last thing you want to do is be overloaded. Now, I will say that in my entire career, I’ve never seen another truck overloaded the way that that truck was that I explained to you a minute ago. Now, and remember, back in the day, those were 716 studs. There were six of them. They definitely weren’t over – how should I say this? They didn’t overthink that back then. You know, the new trucks have much heavier running gear and things like that than what we did back in the day. But I’ll never forget that thing coming in and listening to the lug studs pop and shoot across the shop because of how much weight was literally in the back of the truck. I mean, the truck was so heavy. I don’t know how the tires didn’t keep from popping. Because remember, this would have been probably back in about 1976 or so, 76 or 77. We didn’t have the same tires we have now. And yet somehow that truck drove in, mind you, drove in. Everything down on the bump stops and so on. Now, that’s something else to talk about. Let me throw this in really quick on this whole GVW. I think I’ve got enough time here left to talk about this. There are suspension aides. Airbags, there’s a brand called Timbrum that’s basically a new bump stop that aids in overloads. You can put different overload springs in, take the spring pack apart. You can add leafs. There’s guys out there that can make custom leafs. There’s always a way to make the truck sit level no matter what the load is, but you’ve never changed the GVWR of the truck. One of the things I used to always caution my customers, and they’d come and they’d say, oh, I need some airbags. Okay, why? Well, my truck’s squatting. Okay. Because of? Well, I’m hauling whatever. I’m like, okay, time out. Let’s stop for a moment. I want to make sure we do everything for you safely. I mean, bottom line is, yes, I can sell you airbags. Yes, I can get your truck level. But at the end of the day… Are we over capacity for the truck? Because if we are, because I can’t change the GVWR of the truck. Putting airbags on your truck is not going to change its load carrying capacity. I can level the load you have, but I cannot increase your load carrying capacity because by law it was set up as X and it is that and always will be. I can’t change frame strength. I can’t change the axle, the brakes, the configuration. I mean, all of the things that go into the factories, figuring out what this GVWR is, I can’t change that. So a lot of times at that point, you’re walking out to the parking lot, and if the person was either hauling what they had or they were thinking about telling you what they were hauling and so on, you’d go out in the parking lot and really have a long discussion of, I can level the truck. But at the end of the day, am I really helping you out or should we do something different? In some cases, do you have the right truck for what you’re doing? I talked about this last couple of weeks, even when it came to towing and things like that. Do you have the right equipment is the best way to say that at the end of the day. And frankly, in some cases, they didn’t. Now, I will say this in some cases because the customer wanted it. We went ahead and put on their – we went to put the airbags on. Now, back when I was doing things, because liability has always been around, I would put on the invoice big, bold letters, these airbags – will not increase the gross vehicle weight rating of the truck. They are load leveling devices only. Something to that nature is what I put on the ticket, on the invoice, to make sure that nobody thought for a minute I had increased the GVWR of the truck because I hadn’t. I couldn’t. And I wanted to make sure, and by the way, I used to put a line underneath that that the customer had to sign off on. So there was no question as to did I read this or not. Because right below it, I had a signature line where they signed that ticket or signed that invoice in that area on top of the bottom of the invoice. By the way, some of you guys that are doing this stuff that own shops and so on, you should think about what I just said in some cases because it’s really important to make sure that you’re communicating in writing, not verbally, In writing, everything you’re doing for the customer, because no offense, Mr. Customer has a short memory. And he doesn’t remember you telling him that it wouldn’t change the GVWR of the truck. He thinks it did. So all of a sudden, you’re now in small claims court because he’s not happy about something and the judge is saying, well, where’s this all written out? And you say, well, I told him. Did you? And I hate to say this, but typically it sides with the customer over you, so have it in writing. And those of you, by the way, that are the buyer, you want it in writing as well because you want to make sure that everything is all dialed in on your side. But again, I cannot tell you how many times throughout the years, because man, back in the day, I can’t tell you how many Adelief packages, overload systems, There used to be a Hellwig system back in the day. Those were the helper springs that went on top of the springs. It was an interesting way of doing things, but it went on top. Used some U-bolts and things to actually aid with the suspension. And I’ve been doing suspension overload systems. I mean, did those for almost 40 years. Just started in the dealership and then went on out on my own and kept doing them there. And again, the thing I always had to remind everybody of was… This will not change the overall gross vehicle weight rating of that vehicle. If you want to carry more capacity and do it in a legal fashion in the way that it’s supposed to be done, go buy a bigger truck. Now, really quick, for those of you that are buying trucks, this is something else no one ever talks about. I shouldn’t say that. There is a guy down in Texas that runs a dealership that I can’t think of his name right now. I follow him on TikTok. Smartest guy. One of the smartest guys in the dealership world I think I’ve ever seen. And honest. Honest. He did a comparison the other day where there’s two almost identical F-250s. Looked like they were equipped the same way to the naked eye. You wouldn’t know that either truck was different from the other one. They look like twin sisters. With one exception. The GVWR on one truck was almost 1,000 pounds higher than the other one. And yet by looking at the truck, just taking a walk around, you would never know the difference. And what he was surmising was it had to do probably with everything from, even though the axles and stuff were the same, probably had to do with suspension, braking, things like that. One truck was heavier than the other. So my point with you guys even buying trucks is, When you go to buy the truck, everything I just mentioned on the door sticker is in. It’s there. It’s on the truck. You can look at it. And if you’re ordering a truck, it’s going to be in the specs. Oh, and by the way, if you order a truck and it comes in, double check the door sticker to make sure it matches the specs that you were actually ordering. Because, guys, people make mistakes. Sometimes the factory even will supplement something and just ship it on down the line and hope the dealer or nobody ever notices. Make sure that things match what you wanted in the first place. So, so important when you’re doing things this way because the last thing you want to have is a truck that underperforms the things you need it to do when it’s all said and done. And I know I’ve spent a lot of time on this particular topic, but again, this was a topic that was asked of me to do. I think because there’s so much misconception around what will my truck actually haul, what will my rig actually haul, that in a lot of cases, they’re overloaded. And when they get overloaded, that’s when accidents happen. And ultimately, and this came from Mike. Mike, by the way, thank you for this. I appreciate it. Because at the end of the day, yes, not only Mike, myself, Luke, all of us want everybody to be safe. Because we’ve got a stake in this as well. I drive on the roads. Luke drives on the road. My family drives on the roads. You guys drive on the roads. Your families drive on the road. And the last thing I want is somebody rolling down the road that’s an accident waiting to happen. Literally, I mean, I don’t want to be next to that guy that’s so overloaded that it’s like, yeah, no, I’m moving away. And by the way, I’ve done that. I’ll be like, I’m either going to speed up and get around this guy or I’m just moving completely out of the way because I am not going to be anywhere near this particular person when that accident happens because it will. It’s bound to. So, again, A, thank you so much for the topic suggestions. It means a lot to me, and we’ve covered a lot of things since November, a lot more to continue to cover. And as I always say, if there’s something you would like me to cover or you’d like to join the program, you’d like to become a sponsor, a partner, whatever, by all means, reach out. Let me know. The website is drive-radio.com. That’s drive-radio.com. there’s a link right there, a button for The Extra Mile. Click that. All of our previous shows are there. You can listen to some of the stuff that we’ve talked about in the past. And, again, I’ve enjoyed doing this. I hope you guys have enjoyed listening as well. Luke, as always, appreciate you, man. Thank you, as always. And with that was another episode of Drive Radio, The Extra Mile, heard right here on KLZ 560.
