Last week we ran our truck and trailer across a CAT scale and drove away with a slip of paper full of numbers. This week we actually sat down and figured out what those numbers mean, over dinner at Cracker Barrel, during our first-ever overnight stay in one of their parking lots.
Our first Cracker Barrel overnight
If you're new to RV life, here's the deal: many Cracker Barrel locations let RVers park overnight for free, and the unwritten rule is you buy dinner or breakfast as a thank you. We'd heard about this arrangement forever but had never actually used it. Pulling our Brinkley Model Z 3515 into the designated RV spots felt a little strange the first time, like we were getting away with something. Then we went inside and held up our end of the bargain with dinner. Free overnight parking plus biscuits is a fair trade in our book.
Reading the CAT scale results
Over that dinner we spread out our scale ticket and started doing math. If you missed the weigh-in itself, that whole adventure is in the previous video. A CAT scale gives you three numbers: steer axle, drive axle, and trailer axles. From those, plus your rig's ratings, you can work out the questions that actually matter. Are we under the truck's payload? Under the gross combined rating? Under the pin weight the hitch can carry?
The water weight problem
The wrinkle in our numbers was water. We crossed the scale carrying a good amount of it, and water is heavy: about 8.3 pounds per gallon, so a full fresh tank can add several hundred pounds all by itself. We estimated how much we were hauling and subtracted it to figure out our real dry travel weight. The takeaway was mixed. We're not dangerously overloaded, but we're closer to our limits than we'd like, and traveling with full tanks eats margin we might want someday for gear or a bad road. The practical fix is boring: travel with less water when we know there's a fill station at the destination.
Then came the bugs
The evening was going well until we noticed we had passengers. A swarm of flying insects had hitched a ride from our last campground and decided our RV was home now. We spent the rest of the night on patrol, swatting, vacuuming, and sealing up whatever gap they were using. There's no dignified way to describe two adults chasing bugs around a fifth wheel at 10 pm in a Cracker Barrel parking lot, so we filmed it instead.
What we'd tell other RVers
Weigh your rig. Not once, eventually, someday, but early, with the tanks in the state you actually travel in. The numbers on the brochure are not the numbers in your driveway, and every rig gains weight the longer you live in it. Ours did, and now at least we know exactly where we stand.
Watch the full episode, bugs and all, on YouTube. We also send a short weekly newsletter about where we are and what broke this week. The signup form is on our newsletter page.