Has anyone ever caught flack being over max tow rating?

There should be a 32 or 33K option. No way I'd ever load a 350/550 series with 40K you have to get up the hills and you have to be able to stop and possibly start off on a hill.
I had my truck stall going up a hill with 15K of steel plates on it and if the hill is steep enough you can be drug backwards with brakes being stomped through the floor. Replaced a couple tires due to flat spots from being drug backwards. 26-33K is what I'd consider maximum safe pulling grosses, leaning more towards 26-29k.

 

We cut our load weight off at 15k for the 3500's, and 16k for the 4500, and 5500's. We don't push anything on our guys. Had a guy here with a duramax 3500 that didn't like to load more than 12k lbs on. Wasn't always easy to load him but we made it happen. He did miss out on some really good loads because of it. And these are max weights we're talking about, it's not like we're running that heavy everyday. Heck before I switched from semi trucks to hotshots years ago most guys we seen out there were killing their 3500's hauling 20,000 lb to 24,000 lb loads on a daily bases. They had their trucks worn out before they got halfway through their loan. We didn't want to see any of our owner operators in that situation so we set our limits right out of the gate.

I'd say 50 to 60 percent of the loads we move weigh under 8,000 lbs.

The lower weight choice on IRP that you mentioned is just a tad to light for us here. Most of our guys have a empty weight of approx 18,000 lbs.

And with these newer Dodges with the Aisin Automatic. With the tow haul/exhaust brake combination, we don't see any issues going over the mountains out west here. They pull and hold on the grades as good as any semi that I've owned.