More about Cargo Carrying Capacity (CCC)!

[nrmcclain]

Surprisingly a Motorcoach built on a higher rated chassis may not always result in a higher CCC!

Information in the “Factory Brochures for Older Born Free Motorcoaches” section on the club forum shows the following for BF 2008 Model Year:

• The 24’ RB built on a 14,500 lb GVWR chassis has a 500 lb hitch tongue wt, 5,000 lb hitch towing wt and a 2,304 lb CCC.

• The 32’ President built on a 19,500 lb GVWR chassis has a 500 lb tongue wt, 5,000 lb hitch towing wt and a 2,294 lb CCC.

This indicates that the Motorcoach built on the lower rated 14,500 lb chassis has a 10 lb better CCC than the coach built on the higher rated 19,500 lb chassis.

Additionally, the current CCC weights listed in the “2017 RV Buyers Guide” for the newer versions of these 2 coaches (24’ Spirit and 31’ Majestic) again show the same trend but with an 80 lb better CCC for the motor coach on the lower rated 14,500 lb chassis.

However, we believe main message here is that when thinking about the purchase of a coach, It pays to look very carefully at all specification details and consider how they may (or may not) match your needs and expectations.

Nick & Dee Dee
2006 24’RB

[Roger H]

Surprisingly a Motorcoach built on a higher rated chassis may not always result in a higher CCC!

Information in the “Factory Brochures for Older Born Free Motorcoaches” section on the club forum shows the following for BF 2008 Model Year:

• The 24’ RB built on a 14,500 lb GVWR chassis has a 500 lb hitch tongue wt, 5,000 lb hitch towing wt and a 2,304 lb CCC.

• The 32’ President built on a 19,500 lb GVWR chassis has a 500 lb tongue wt, 5,000 lb hitch towing wt and a 2,294 lb CCC.

This indicates that the Motorcoach built on the lower rated 14,500 lb chassis has a 10 lb better CCC than the coach built on the higher rated 19,500 lb chassis.

Nick & Dee Dee
2006 24’RB

Nick, here are the specs on my C5500 chassis from Chevy:

{{{Chevrolet}}} Kodiak C4500/C5500
General
GVWR, lb 19,500
GCWR, lb 25,999
Tow capacity, lb 12,000 (rec), 15,000 (fifth/g'neck)

The issue isn't so much CCC as it is how much coach you get WITH that CCC, and how much wear the components will take dragging it around over the life of the coach. My 32 RQ has a curb weight of about 16,000 lbs... which puts it in the realm of 3,000 lbs CCC. BUT it's also a 32' coach with standing headroom throughout, rolls on 19.5" tires and has axles, drive shafts, and a rear end half again as big as the e450's. The engine has a liter and a half more displacement (there's no substitute for cubic inches,) has a huge Allison transmission, and the rear end is a medium truck differential. The chassis is capable of towing 12,000 lbs. Quite frankly, I suspect that Born Free was being very conservative in their brochure spec sheet on the 32' Kodiak-based coaches.

And let's be realistic here... The heaviest single item that you can put in your coach is water. A full tank in mine (with the water heater filled) is roughly 600 lbs. Add to that two humans, and you've got roughly a thousand pounds of CCC, leaving somewhere between 1200 and 2000 more for 'stuff.' It's very unlikely that anyone loads more than a thousand pounds of 'stuff' into their RV... and a thousand pounds worth is a LOT of 'stuff!'

I suspect that if Born Free had put the 24' box on the Kodiak 32' chassis, and offered it as a flatbed toy hauler for the other 8' that the CCC would have been roughly a thousand pounds higher.

I suspect that the real issue isn't so much overloading the GVWR, but overloading individual corners of the coach... and quite honestly with 5,000 more GVWR pounds to work with and 19.5" tires (over the 16s on the e450) on the medium truck chassis that's a LOT more difficult to do.

You're absolutely correct, when buying you do need to look at the specs... but the CCC is only a part of the buying decision.

[shilohdad]

The problem on the E450 chassis is not necessarily the CCC, but the weight on the rear axle. We have not yet weighed our 2017 Spirit, but we did get our 2006 24RB 4-corner weighed. Loaded up as we normally run, the total weight was 13,100 pounds. This gave us almost 1,000 pounds more we could ostensibly load. However, our back axle weight was 9,500 pounds, about 50 pounds overweight. Our side-to-side weights were quite well-balanced.

Walter Cannon of the RV Safety & Education Foundation, who did the weighing, told us not to worry about the minor over-weight on the back axle. Many coaches from other manufacturers on the E450 chassis were far more overweight on the back axle. Also, he said that Born Free coaches were better balanced side-to-side than most other coaches.

I guess the moral here is to load your E450 coaches with as much heavy stuff as you can towards the front of the coach. On our Spirit, we put our spare tire on rim towards the front of our underbed storage. We put spare canned goods in a bin in the overcab. We put as much heavy stuff as we can as far forward in the coach as we can. So, CCC on the E450 is pretty good, but beware the weight on the back axle.