Many years ago, living in Sherwood Park, Alberta, we had a "neighbourhood truck", an ancient 50 something Chevy half-ton, owned by a neighbour, Denny, who left the key in his milk-chute. Anyone was welcome to use the truck, as long as you brought it back with a full tank.
One day, I needed some gravel for a landscaping project, so I went and got the truck and headed for the gravel quarry along the river. I'd never been there before, or bought gravel before. The guy at the gate asked, "How much do you need?" I had no idea, but told him the area and depth I wanted, and he told me, "You'll need about a yard and a half." He directed me to the pile where a front-end loader was waiting. The driver scooped up a yard and a half of gravel, which was a heaping scoop, moved it over the truck bed and dumped it. The weight hit the truck, the rear springs bent concave and bottomed out. Shocks were squished closed. The tires looked flat. I asked how much a yard and a half weighed, and was told, "'Bout two-three tons."
The truck barely moved, and when I got on the short stretch of highway home, I couldn't get out of second gear, and top speed was about twenty. The temp gauge pinned at the top. I got it home, howling and boiling, and started shoveling the load out onto my yard. I think I set some kind of world record, getting the load out of there, before Denny came home and saw what I'd done.
Incredibly, the old Chevy survived, and gave a couple of years more service as the neighbourhood truck.
That was my hard lesson in over-loading a vehicle.
