The #1 rookie mistake is to only look at the towing capacity of the truck...unfortunately choosing a vehicle to tow your trailer is a bit more complicated. Oh, and by the way, neither the trailer dealers nor the truck dealers will have the correct information so you seriously need to do your research.
When we first bought the Hideout we were focused on our Tacoma's towing capacity of 6,500 lbs. We were looking for a trailer that had a dry weight in the area of 4,750-5,000. The Hideout is at 5,000 lbs dry. The trailer sales rep told us that for each person staying in the trailer add 150 lbs of personal property (not true if you are full-time). Ok, we figured that we would have about 600-1000 lbs of personal property and we would be well under the max towing capacity of the truck. However the GVWR (Gross Vehicle Weight Rating) of the Hideout is 7,500 lbs and we altered the Hideout before we even brought it home by having the dealer enclose the underbelly. When we have weighed it we have been over 6,500 lbs by a couple hundred pounds despite trying to thin out our personal property. So we have been overweight on towing capacity alone, but that is only part of the issue.
You also have to consider the payload of the truck. The payload is the weight of all the stuff the truck can carry including passengers, stuff in the bed, the weight of the hitch, and the tongue weight of the trailer. Trucks front and rear axles also have maximum weight ratings. If the tongue weight of your trailer is around 1000 pounds and the truck's payload is only slightly over 1000 lbs you have no available weight for passengers and stuff in the bed. This is also the problem we ran into. Our rear axle was overloaded by approximately a hundred pounds. The Tacoma is an awesome truck and despite the fact that we were slightly over towing capacity and payload it performed really well on steep grades up and down as well as on flats in windy conditions. However, it did give me stress.
This time we are wise to the details. Our new Mesa Ridge has a GVWR of 9000 lbs - that is the maximum it should weigh with property, propane, & water. The tongue weight is 931 lbs and we want to include 700 pounds for passengers, bikes in the bed and other stuff. In other words we need a payload of at least 1630 and a towing capacity of over 9000 lbs. However we don't want to be right up against these limits, we want a little room to work with.
The trailer always has a sticker either on the side, inside or both that looks something like this:
I also really want to maximize fuel efficiency - this is something that really give me heartburn about upgrading the rig. So I did a lot of research into half ton trucks and found that the Ford F150 comes in many different configurations including a 4x4 with a towing capacity of 10,700 lbs. and a payload of 2030 lbs. The unloaded mpg are 17 city, 23 hwy, and 19 combined. Because we use the truck as our second vehicle while "home" and because we use the truck for sightseeing once the rig is unhitched we could benefit from a truck with decent gas mileage. We want the option of 4x4 for the land because those dirt roads get bad and are not maintained by the county. We want enough truck to pull the trailer, but not too much truck so as to sacrifice gas efficiency. We were looking for the Goldilocks truck!
So we spent a few days traveling to six different Ford dealerships looking for a very specific configuration of truck. The necessities were a truck with a payload of 2000 lbs or close to it, a towing package, 4x4, and towing capacity of over 10,000 lbs. We also wanted the 3.5L V6 Ecoboost engine which give you the max power with the best gas efficiency. At many dealerships we were disappointed that their "best" truck had a payload in the 1700's. This is because of all the other options piled on which cost more in terms of money and weight. We soon learned that we needed a very basic model with few frills to meet our payload requirement. Finally we found one at Camelback Ford...here are the stickers from inside the driver's door:
Together you can get a good idea about how much weight is available on the rear axle, which is the one you have to avoid overloading. With this truck the Gross Vehicle Weight Rating (maximum load is 7000) and the payload, or available cargo/passenger/trailer weight is 1994 lbs. We anticipated needing around 1700 lbs of payload considering the weight of our family, cargo, the hitch and the tongue weight of the trailer.
The final piece is the towing capacity of the truck. For that there is a sticker underneath the rear bumper that looks like this:
This shows that with a weight distribution hitch this truck can haul up to 11,000 lbs. And the max tongue weight is 1,100 lbs. Given the GVWR of 8995 lbs for our trailer and tongue weight of 900 lbs this truck is sufficient.
So we did it! We bought the F150...
And today we brought the new rig home right after a quick stop at the CAT scales to get an unloaded weight. Both of the truck's axles are well under the GAWR (Gross Axle Weight Rating). The trailer axle was a little light from what was on the sticker. Prior to our next adventure we will weight it loaded, but the truck pulled like a champ - it felt much more stable than the Tacoma. The best part about this set up is we have a 10-speed automatic transmission as opposed to the 6-speed manual on the Tacoma. While the Tacoma did well going forward it was always terrible to back up with the manual transmission. I really enjoyed backing the rig up today (I seem to be terrible at giving directions from the ground, but I am very good at taking direction while in the driver's seat so I've been doing the backing up).
Tonight the Mesa Ridge is sleeping next to the Hideout!
No comments:
Post a Comment