Do I Believe The CAT Scale?

[jeepin95]

We purchased a 2021 Jayco SLX 154BH Baja a couple weeks ago and finally had the opportunity to weigh everything today. We had an almost full 30# propane tank (Only used for 5 minutes on the furnace for testing and a few minutes cooking one meal), battery, clothes, full fresh water tank, dishes, food, etc. in the trailer. We filled the fresh water on purpose before leaving camp knowing that we would stop by the CAT on the way home. All we were missing was the food we had consumed, however we did gain a lot of water weight from our soaking wet clothes in the tub after hiking in the rain :-)

According to the cargo sticker on our 154 the weight of the vehicle is 2,781lbs with a full propane cylinder. According to the sticker a full load of water is 215lbs and we have a max cargo weight of 669 lbs. Given the ~215lbs of fresh and everything we had onboard I was roughly estimating we would be in the ~400-500lbs range for cargo, brining us to ~3300 lbs, still within our limits...this was not the case upon receiving the CAT report however.

TV is a 2015 Jeep Grand Charokee Ecodiesel.

According to the CAT scale our steer axle was 2920, drive axle 3740 and trailer axle 2880 for a total of 9540lbs. Given that the factory indicates 2781lbs without water, and we added ~215lbs of water alone we should be well over the 2880lbs that the CAT indicated. Our fresh tank indicated full, and based on how long I was filling I do believe I loaded 20+ gallons to the empty tank.

With our fairly short wheelbase I was only able to keep the trailer axle ~2-3' behind the yellow line for scale #3 while still keeping our front axle on scale #1. Should I trust this weight over my estimated weight? Should I fully load up and weigh again next weekend but keep the trailer axle centered on scale 2 rather than at the end of scale 3 leaving my front to hang over and not weigh? Could the CAT be correct and the factory sticker off by that much?

I did read the other forum post about how to use the CAT to determine if the WDH is configured properly, however it doesn't look like we will be able to easily go through that process and my concern is mostly trailer weight not WDH.

Thanks

[brwarrior]

I would believe a CAT scale over the sticker. You're carrying a LOT of weight on the hitch. Probably 600 lbs. My 2020 195RB Baja was maxed out at 700lb on the tongue with dual GC2 batteries on the tongue. I haven't reweighed but I dropped down to a single LIFEPO4 under the bed which should have dropped about 80 lbs off the tongue.

IIRC water us 8.4lb/gallon so that 252 lbs of water and most of that is going on the hitch. You need to make 3 runs across the scale to know exactly what's going on but 2 will get just your trailer weight.

[crockettlarry]

If I understand all your numbers and explanation correctly, you cannot tell the true weight of your trailer without weighing the trailer alone or weighing the tow vehicle vehicle alone.

That missing 500 pounds is probably on your hitch.

Larry

[jeepin95]

Thank you both for the responses. After all the reading I had done, I was still focused on the axle weight of the trailer and not the total weight. I'll have to figure out a time when they may not be so busy so I can drop the trailer.
Thanks