It's called a budget. The payload cart is a high focus, gameplay oriented object. And it's not 14k triangles, it's closer to 11.5k, which let me tell you, is a big difference. The problem with your theory on "This is 2010", is that not every object is gameplay oriented. What you're missing is that you've created a detail object with the focus of a gameplay object. If you make all your models like this (and so far, that's exactly the kind of work you do), then you easily go over budget without even trying.
Oh, perhaps if you were making this for a game in another engine, something that wasn't multiplayer, and if I were your art director, I would let it slide...then again we'd be using normal maps for objects in the game and this wouldn't even be an issue in the first place. But you're not, you're working with the Source engine, so don't even give me that bullshit.
Every time I see your work it's painful to look at because you don't comprehend the idea of a budget. And you also don't pay any attention to the stylistic aspect of tf2, or the time period of the game, and you walk around talking about stuff with this high and mighty know it all attitude that you and a few members of this community could do without.