Fight over pickup bragging rights reveals Detroit's fuzzy payload math

No vehicles mean more to Detroit's automakers than their pickups, which have been the most popular models sold by General Motors, Ford and Chrysler for decades. And while the three tend to avoid getting in each other's grilles in most segments, the billions of dollars at stake in the pickup market leads to more aggressive moves.

It was one of those occasional spats over bragging rights this week that led to revelations about how the automakers measure and market their trucks' capabilities — and a deep-seated dispute over whether some of those choices go to far.

As unearthed by Automotive News, the fight began with sparring between Ford and Chrysler's Ram division over which built the heavy-duty truck with the greatest towing capacity. Ram contends its Ram 3500 deserves the title; Ford says it's F-450 has a higher figure and threatened to take Ram to court to halt its ads. Ram replied that the F-450 was actually a commercial-grade vehicle — Class 4 in the technical term — that Ford had written down on paper only, in a bid to deny Ram the superlative.

All of this wouldn't matter outside of a corporate boardroom, but the dispute brought to light just how Ford and GM tally the payload capacity of their trucks. Every truck has a "gross vehicle weight rating" — the maximum load it can carry. The payload rating is the gross weight minus the truck's curb weight; every pound of additional mass built into a pickup typically lowers its payload.

Ram says it takes the lightest base model including all necessary fluids and deems that as the curb weight for payload calculations. But Ford and GM do it differently; they delete some everyday items from their base pickups to reduce their weight and thereby boost their payload ratings.

In Ford's case, it says it calculates a minimum weight for its F-Series Super Duty pickups by removing the spare tires, on-board jack, radio and center console and switching to lighter wheels, saving about 150 lbs. GM says it removes the back bumper and spare tire on both its heavy-duty and 2015 versions of the light-duty Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra before measuring payload, for an unspecified weight loss.