
If you've always believed that a vehicle's towing capacity and its payload capacity are one and the same, you wouldn't be alone. However, there are big differences between the two, and ignoring those differences can result in major damage to your vehicle.
Payload capacity is the additional weight that a vehicle can support within itself. Anything from a cooler in the back seat to a haul of gravel in the bed of a pickup truck is payload. Towing capacity is what a vehicle is capable of pulling.