Haul limit

If you have heavier springs, shocks, and appropriate bump stops you can haul just about as much as the engine can handle. Especially if it’s a flag straight road

 

You’re less likely to shock load your frame and axles this way, but I’d be careful about giving that advice! Your diffs, trans, clutch, ujoints, brakes, bearings all suffer from sustained use with heavier loads. That said I have done 2 coast to coast moves with my front and rear bouncing off the bump stops and it was mostly overloaded for around 100,000 miles. Only real damage that I attributed to that was my rear diff trying to grenade itself at 170,00 miles and my suspension was sagged by around an inch. I’m much more conscious about the weight of my vehicle and what I ad to it for mods now because of it.

 

Indeed, you gotta do what you gotta do. In the end trucks are just tools and you had a job that needed to be done. I'm just tilting at windmills that Toyota seems to build the Tacoma just good enough while the old Pickup and I think the Hilux still can be overloaded like that. It's rated in some configurations to be over a metric 1/2 ton truck, e.g. 1,225 kg of payload or 2,700 lbs. So even with a burly dude and a few tools you'd still have a whole lot of cargo left over. There wouldn't have been a widening gap I bet in that case. The Hilux GVWR is 6,600 lbs, which is +1,000 lbs more than the Tacoma (my door sill shows GVWR of 5,350 lbs) and it shows in how they're built.