Ram offers a convenient tool to allow Ram truck owners to learn their exact payload and towing specifications. Owners enter their VIN, and the tool spits out the information. Recently, some owners reported strange problems with this tool when double-checking their figures. What’s going on with the towing figures? Are Ram owners being misled about the towing capacity of their trucks?

How are Ram trucks misleading owners?

Some owners have found that entering their VIN a year ago and then now delivers different results in the Ram towing capacity tool. The stated numbers have changed, sometimes downward by several thousand pounds, which can be extremely alarming.

This doesn’t mean the truck has lost the ability to tow or carry as much as before. A likely reason for this change is a technical glitch in the online tool. The Fast Lane Trucks team reached out to Ram for more information, but none has been provided so far. Ram did agree to look into the problem.

How different can the Ram towing capacity figures appear?

Using a 2022 Ram 2500 Limited Crew Cab 4WD with the 6.7-lite Cummins diesel engine, one customer received different figures from one year to the next. The first time the online tool returned information, the payload numbers were 2,069 pounds, and the max towing was 20,049 pounds. This is problematic because the Ram 2500 has never been officially rated to tow more than 20,000 and has an official rating of 19,990 pounds.

The same truck owner entered figures one year later and saw dramatic changes in the numbers. This time, the payload of the Ram was 1,980 pounds, and the towing capacity listed was 15,050 pounds. This could be a problem if this owner has a trailer that weighs 16,000 pounds or more.

A second problem found in the Ram trucks online towing tool

Another test uncovered a completely different problem. This time the team used a Ram 1500 to determine the towing capacity. The only difference in their entry was to enter the VIN with capital letters and compare it to using lowercase letters. Strangely, the results for the 2019 Ram 1500 showed different towing capacity numbers.

Using capital letters in the VIN, the truck, with a 5.7-liter Hemi V8, was rated to carry 1,317 pounds of payload and tow up to 11,217 pounds. Using lowercase letters, the same truck shows 1,780 pounds of payload capacity and a tow rating of 11,240 pounds.

Which figures are owners supposed to trust?

How are owners of Ram trucks supposed to proceed?

Ram publishes a full towing chart with every truck configuration broken down on its website. This is currently the chart the TFLtrucks team suggests owners use. Towing capacities don’t typically change within the same generation, making this charge useful for all model years of the same generation.

Of course, it would also be helpful if Ram did away with the online towing capacity tool and used the same old-school process as General Motors. GM trucks have the towing and payload ratings listed on an informational sticker on every truck. This gives truck owners an easy way to know the truck’s GVWR, GCWR, payload, tongue weight, and trailering capacity.

Next, check out some things you’ll like about the 2023 Ram 1500, or learn more about the Ram trucks’ towing capacity problems in this video below: