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Probably something boring like workplace safety (mentioned blow), but I want to believe it's for boarding efficiency. Other travelers fussing with their ridiculous oversized carry-on is one of the most infuriating parts of air travel.
You line up nice and orderly, pass the ticket check, walk down the corridor, greet the flight staff, awkwardly try not to make eye contact with every row of passengers on the way back to your seat and then - hold up. What's this? Traffic is stopped ahead? A middle-aged fellow with t-rex arms is trying to clean and jerk 120 pounds of laptop charger and winter clothing in a wheeled suitcase that he 100% won't use at all on this 5-hour flight. That takes a full minute because he's short and the person in front of him put in their giant wheeled suitcase first, and his won't fit. Finally he manages to turn it on its side (and you can tell the compartment bin isn't going to close now and the flight attendant will have to fix it anyway..). Then he turns around and does it again for his wife.
Then the scene plays out again in reverse because you're stuck behind them deplaning too.
The whole concept of carry-on should be abolished. And don't even get me started on baggage carousels..
Edit: (oh, I misread. you're having the opposite problem, which makes the carry-on weight even worse)
Carry-on is fine, you just shouldn't be allowed to bring your wheeled luggage and hard-sided baggage. If you can't actually carry it, well, it's not a carry-on. I use a Cotopaxi Allpa 35L and it's just absolutely trivial to shrug it off my shoulders and toss it in the overhead. Even on smaller regional jets (e.g. CRJ900), it squishes into the overhead with no trouble. I also don't know what the hell people are doing with their gigantic bags in the first place - that backpack suffices for week-plus international trips that include casual clothes, dressier attire, and running gear.
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Other travelers fussing with their ridiculous oversized carry-on is one of the most infuriating parts of air travel.
While the size of the allowed carry-on is officially limited (and, to be fun, different for different airlines, in theory), in all my years of travel I have never seen anybody actually check that. If it fits the compartment (however much force and effort and time it'd require to make it), it's ok. Yes, delaying boarding to stuff your oversized luggage into the undersized storage compartment is an asshole move, but I have never seen anybody deboarded or even forced to check in the bag (unless it completely failed to fit) for that.
The whole concept of carry-on should be abolished.
With properly run airports, I'd go for it. In some airports, my bag got to the baggage claim the same minute I got there, so why would I object to that? My only reservations are: some airports are shit at this (among other things) and you have to wait for like 20 minutes for your bag, and b) United breaks guitars. And suitcases - it broke one of mine, and managed to put a huge dent of the size of my fist in the corner of the other (which is supposed to be the most resilient place of the whole structure, so maybe they were just flexing). But my local airport is small, so I can check in the bag literally in minutes. In some mega-airport it can turn into a hour-long adventure, so I can get why people don't want to deal with it.
Also, you are not allowed to put laptops there, but that's no big deal since I have a separate under-the-seat backpack for that.
European airlines absolutely check the size (but not weight) of carry-on bags. Full-service airlines will gate check the bag for free if it is a close call, low-cost airlines will charge you double the usual checked bag fee because you didn't pre-order.
Low-cost airlines now also charge for overhead bin space (or bundle it with speedy boarding) - if you don't pay for bin space, your carry-on has to fit under the seat in front of you.
Yeah, I don't think US has a lot of those nickel-and-dime airlines - United has some attempt at it with "Basic" but that has many exceptions.
My understanding was that Spirit was the US equivalent of Ryanair (the scuzziest and most successful of the EU low-cost airlines). Southwest were low-cost once, but last time I was in the US they generally cost more than basic economy on the crappified full-service airlines.
But the thing that makes Ryanair so successful is that the underlying hard product just works. The planes get you from A to B, on time, and cheaply if you follow the easy-to-understand rules about things like bag sizes. I prefer Easyjet, but probably only because there is something about the aesthetics of stepping onto a Ryanair plane which somehow rubs in the fact that you must be falling out of the upper-middle class.
Interestingly, Southwest has the best default service package now - free checked bags, no change fees, etc.
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Spirit is definitely seen as lower class.
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