[fcatwo]

Not being an engineer I have no technical expertise to offer on the "frameless-vehicle" issue but I was down at our local health club a couple of weeks ago and saw weight lifters throwing around 300-400lbs of iron with no apparent damage to their frames. I'm thinking it would take more than the tongue weights we are dealing with to damage the frame of any vehicle with a 3500lb tow rating. Suspension components possibly if the weight is not properly distributed but not the frame. Just my $0.02.

People do overload however. I was hand loading a few buckets of walkway gravel at a sand and gravel place a few years back when a guy pulled in under the gravel hopper with his pickup and signaled for the operator to start loading. The truck sat down on the stops early on but the owner kept signaling for the tower operator to add more. Both rear tires finally gave up with a tremendous explosion and the owner must have set a new Olympic back-jump record before just standing with both hands on his head.

The tower operator calmly climbed down and pulled the truck back out of the way with a piece of heavy equipment. I didn't hang around to see how it turned out. The guy may have driven it out like that for all I know.