We had a customer who is a general contractor at a shop I worked in for about 12 years.
He had a mid-80's F150 with a Utility bed on it. The bed was a "wide" model, made for a dually truck. I am quite certain it was over the GVWR with just the empty bed on it.
Load Range "C" tires (6 PR), and some Hellwig LP-30 overload springs. He was constantly coming in complaining that it "sagged", and would break the (lifetime warranty) Hellwigs.
We always told him he needed a stouter truck, but he wouldn't buy one because "the registration fees are too expensive....that would be stupid, because this truck is big enough to carry all my stuff".
So, we spent years warranteeing all of the overloaded springs, brakes, and tires. I told the shop owner that this guy would become a liability.
One day he comes in with his lawyer. One of his rear axles (8.8" Ford 1/2-ton unit) snapped on a busy two-lane, he lost control and caused a really nasty pileup. He was going to sue because we had replaced the bearings and seals about 6 months before.
I happened to be in the office when he came in, and I made some comment about how it never would have happened if the truck wasn't so overloaded.
My boss shot me "the look", and I walked back out into the shop. I called all the guys up front, (the boss wasn't real happy about that) and addressed the ambulance chaser. I said, "here are six guys who are willing to testify that "Dave's" truck, in our opinion, was well over the legal limit on any given day, and that we have been trying to tell him that for the past five years."
The boss wised up at that point, and offered to have the truck towed from the impound yard to a public scale and pay all the charges to determine if it weighed more than the GVWR tag said it could weigh.
"Dave" piped up at that point and stated that he had removed all of his tools from the truck and currently had a rental, and our shop was going to pay for that, too.
I told lawyer man that tools or no tools, the wrecked truck was going to weigh over the gross.
The boss chimed in and offered to have the rental weighed, too, just in case the rental company was interested in how much he was hauling.
At that point, the lawyer was dragging "Dave" out by the ear, telling him to shut up....and that's the last time we ever saw either of them...
Overloading a light-duty truck on a daily basis is just asking for trouble.