Probably for our freedom unit loving friends, they have a different ton (because why not).

Our freedom tons are built for our particularly large trucks.

I also like to take potshots at Americans, but come on. It's unlikely that a newspaper called "the berliner" in a article about Berlin included this line specifically thinking about citizens of a far-away foreign country who don't use metric units that often.

Occam's razor says that it's actually one of our noble and enlightened European journalists who made that sloppy remark without realising it.