Gladiator Rubicon payload math with a cap and a rooftop tent, am i already over?

the sticker is the number, but it is the wrong number to use. here is the way to do this that takes twenty minutes and thirteen dollars.

the sticker is GVWR minus the curb weight of the truck the day it left the factory, options included. your truck is not that truck anymore. the bumper, the winch, the cap, the rack, the tent, none of it is on the sticker. so the sticker is a starting point and yours is stale.

what you do instead. drive to a CAT scale with the truck as it sits every day, cap and rack and tent on, full tank, you in the seat. get the ticket. it gives you steer axle, drive axle, and gross. subtract gross from the GVWR on the door, which on a 2021 Rubicon should be 6,250. what is left is your real payload, right now, with you in it. then take off the wife and the dog and the fridge and the water.

then do the second thing nobody does. compare the drive axle number to the rear GAWR on the same sticker. the tent and the cap sit behind the rear axle centerline and most of that weight lands there. you can be under gross and over on the rear axle at the same time, and the rear axle is what the tires and the springs care about.

my guess for you: tent, cap and rack put about 400 on the truck, most of it rear, and the bumper and winch another 150 on the nose. that leaves you around 600 for people and stuff. you are over. not by a lot, but over, and the truck will tell you on the first washboard.

nate has it. for what it is worth the Colorado ZR2 is in the same spot, 1,100 and change on the sticker, and every one that comes through the shop with a cap and a tent has the rear bump stops kissing at rest. the fix people actually do is the airbag helper kit, which fixes the sag and does nothing about the weight. you can make it sit level and still be over the axle rating. the chevrolet.com build page shows the ZR2 sticker number if anybody wants to be depressed about their own truck.

from out here, two things. bring less water than you think if you are staying somewhere that has it, Rio Grande Village has potable water and so does Panther Junction, 7 gallons is fine for two nights of primitive. and leave the firewood. you cannot collect it in the park anyway and it is 40 pounds of nothing.

the tent is the one i would think hard about. a ground tent for two people is 8 pounds. the rack and the rooftop tent together are 200 pounds on the roof of the cap, up high, on a truck with a short wheelbase that already sways. i ran a rooftop tent for two years and went back to the ground.

and if you ever hook up a trailer, tongue weight comes out of that same number. my 16 ft utility with the mower on it is 350 on the tongue and my Colorado sticker is 1,390, so with two people and the trailer i have 700 left and a bed full of nothing. the number is smaller than everybody thinks and it is always the rear axle that gets it.

good. one more since you weighed it. the 33s on the Rubicon are load range C, not E, and the sidewall max is around 2,600 a tire at 50 psi, so you are fine on the tires. the guys who go to a 35 in a load range E because it looks tough and then run them at 35 psi have less capacity than you do on the stock tire. post the ticket after the trip with what you actually took, i like the numbers.