Taking the Chevy 2500 HD to MAX Payload! We Hit a Rough Road to See How it Handles

Hey folks and welcome to the Truck King YouTube channel. Sitting next to me is the 2021 Chevy Silverado 2500 and sitting behind it is our backhoe. We just finished using that machine to load up this truck because in this video we're doing everything at max payload. We're going to hit the road, I'll do a fuel economy run and then we're going off-road to see how this thing handles For 2021, this Chevy HD carries over this powertrain. Now that is a 6.6 liter Duramax diesel. It's a V8 and it makes 445 horsepower and 910 pound-feet of torque. And those are impressive numbers but you know what? I think one of the most impressive numbers on this truck has to be the payload. So I can show you here. GM has this awesome door jam sticker down here which tells you all of the numbers and you can see right on there the payload here just under 3,000 pounds which is really a great number for an HD especially considering this is a high country which is absolutely fully loaded. Something we complain about a lot is the fact that heavy duty pickups have gotten so tall and what's interesting is on its half-ton Silverado, Chevy has actually made its powered step swing rearward. Here on the HDs they didn't do that, they just put a physical step right in the side of your truck and it's really handy. We just loaded this bed up and we needed it to get up here and get into those straps so I'm a big fan of that. Now as we roll back, let me show you the bed because she is loaded down. So what we've done here, we've put in a 2,000 pound concrete block and a 500 pound barrel for 2,500 pounds back here in the bed plus dad and I up front, oh yeah, we're over 3,000 pounds so this thing is maxed out. I guess the quick thing I'll say about the bed, I've said it a lot, I'll say it again, I love that there are three tie-down positions at each corner because you get to choose your height. When you tie down a barrel, you want a higher position. When you tie down something like this concrete, you want a lower position and GM is the only brand that gives you so many fixed tie-down points and I really like that. Well that's pretty much it for the walk around, why don't we hit the road and see how it handles. So we're loaded up and we're headed towards our local unmaintained county road. We're not doing hardcore off-roading with this weight in the back because nobody actually does that. Nobody would hit the left hook with 2,500 pounds in the bed but what is realistic is fully loading your truck and then taking it down kind of a rough country road, you know, to get to a job site so that's what we're going to try to recreate today. But right now we're just driving here on road and I'll tell you from the passenger seat, it feels a little stiff in the rear end, you know, I can feel kind of what's going on back there because there's not a lot of travel left, if any, and then the nose feels a little bit high, just, you know, visually I can get that feeling. But then of course, Dab, the big question for you is, you know, what are you feeling while driving and especially do you feel like your steering wheels are a little light? Luckily no, I mean I can feel that the nose is up. Yeah. I think my biggest takeaway right now is just realizing how much more stopping distance I need the brakes. Obviously, you know, with that freaking block back there, I'm not hitting the brakes hard because we don't want it to slide but I can feel how much deeper I'm going into the brakes which is just, you know, a good safety point. You got a lot of weight on there, towing, give yourself lots of stopping distance. Sure, but I guess my next question would be, is it safe to say you feel as though the brakes are maxed out? No. You wouldn't want to go too much further? No, they're not maxed out but for a change they're working hard if you get the difference. Well, and you know what, we're so used to towing trailers I would say we do that more often than load this much and of course the trailer always has trailer brakes so you get those supplemental brakes so you almost forget about it because you have those extra brakes back there. Yeah, and you know, to your point so we can explain that, I mean we've maxed out our payload here, you know, we're at 3,000 pounds give or take, probably over a little bit and what I'm trying to feel is at that weight and that's the manufacturer's weight, are we still comfortable in control and operating normally or do I feel like something's about to let go? And so right off the top, no, nothing's about to let go. However, for a change I can say this truck is working. Yeah, yeah, it's really working. Well, here's our local county road so now we'll hit that and we'll work it a little harder. All right, we started into the big potholes and two takeaways right away, it's not bottomed out yet, that's what dad and I are definitely feeling. Oh, barrel, barrel, oh jeez, that barrel. Okay, we tried to tire it out really good but this road is pretty rough. I know the block's not rolling around. No, the barrel's knocking around a little bit. Yeah, so we haven't hit the bump stops yet, that's definitely a point in the right direction, in the positive direction, but it's definitely a really bumpy ride, you just have so much weight going up and over these. Yeah, it's sprung, boy. Yeah, it really is. Yeah, but not hitting the bump stops. It's doing it, yeah, it's absolutely doing it. Not hitting the bump stops, which is pretty impressive because when you look at the leafs, they're almost flat. Yeah, they really, really are. Hey, drunky dog. So now you've seen us bounce around off-road and again, you handled it, I didn't feel like it was at the limit, it definitely changes the dynamics. If the truck was empty off-road, it'd be extremely stiff, fully loaded, every single little movement is just exaggerated, you know, dad calls it the drunk dog because you're doing this all the time, the thing's just flopping around, but I think we were impressed because again, with all that weight, you'd expect it to be hitting bump stops, feeling like something was going to break and it never felt like that. And I think this is where we do have to give credit to the manufacturer because we're often very critical of their payload numbers, however, there's no doubt that when they came up with this number, they went, okay, at this number, you can do nasty stuff to this truck loaded with 3,000 pounds and it's not going to break. Exactly. And yeah, it didn't break and it doesn't even feel like it wants to. Exactly. So now we're merging onto the highway here just to get a bit of smooth driving in. I mean, it feels powerful from over here, do you feel your power's being zapped? No, absolutely not, there's almost no difference. Yeah. I'm stumbling over myself. Yeah, I think if we had 3,000 pounds, plus we were towing 15,000 pounds, maybe there would be a slight difference, but this diesel has got torque like crazy. Yeah, 10 speed is super smooth, nice shifts. Yeah, I think the question is, does it feel off? Yeah, does it feel floaty? Well, this is it. Right now, we've wound it up to 110, that's not miles per hour, it's about 70 miles an hour, 110 kilometers an hour, and this is where I figured if it was going to float in the front end, I'd feel it, and I don't. I don't. It feels solid from over here. Yeah, yeah, there's definitely the lift in the front that we got when we dropped all that weight in the back, but in coming through the curves and whatnot here, you just feel the weight in the back, that's it. I mean, otherwise the truck is acting actually normally, which is what you want, what I want in a truck like this, so I can get my 3,000 pounds to the job site and not have to white knuckle it. Yeah, exactly. So another interesting question, which I want to answer, is how much does this load change our fuel economy? So I'm actually going to be heading out pretty soon, back to drive home, which is over 100 kilometers, and we're going to see what kind of fuel economy this thing gets. And here is our loaded fuel economy number. So I drove around with that 2,500 pounds in the bed for 193 kilometers. I will say that is mostly highway, over half highway, doing about 110 kilometers per hour, and I managed 12.6 liters per 100, which for such a big truck and such a big load seems extremely reasonable to be honest. And the most important thing, it's really not that much worse than unloaded. And I'll go back and you guys can see that is 18.6 mpg over 120 miles. So there's no doubt that adding a big amount of payload to your rig does not affect your fuel economy nearly as much as adding a big trailer does. All right, so right now we've got the 2,500 pounds in the bed. So we knew it squatted a lot, so let's see where we're at. So right through the middle of the hub, 38 and one quarter inches, 38 and a quarter. So we're going to strip it off, see how much he springs up. All right, so we got the weight off of there now. We're going to have to sweep that out. And when we look at our tank measure, we are now at 40 and one quarter, so two inches. And honestly, to me, it had felt more than that. And interestingly enough, when we do half tons with payload, they're usually around two inches. So obviously the engineering moves at that same rate. Heavier truck, still only going to squat two inches with 3,000 pounds. Well folks, we're coming to the end of this one. We talk about payload numbers a lot on this channel, and that's why I think it's important to test them. Because what we learned today is that this 2,500, when you load it to the limit, it doesn't actually feel like it's at the limit. And that is a confidence inspiring thing, which makes this a solid truck. So like I said, that's it for this one. Please go below, leave me a comment, let me know what you think of the 2,500 and all of our testing. As always, don't forget to hit like, hit subscribe, hit join to become a member, and then come right back here to the channel to see what we're testing next. See ya.