Gas vs Diesel for Towing a Fifth Wheel!!!
I have some issues picking a suitable towing vehicle to haul a travel trailer. Gas vs diesel for towing a fifth wheel? Which one is better? Any suggestion?
Forum Discussion
In my experiences pulling boats over the mountains to the coast a couple times a month from Portland to Tillamook with a 2500 5.7L Chev it was redlining on the hills, same with my buddies gasser ford and at the time the wife and I wanted to get our first pick up camper and we bought a used Arctic Fox 1150 and it was about 4000lbs.
So I shopped for weeks for a diesel because we like to travel over the cascades to eastern Oregon and beyond so with that kind of weight I knew I would probably get about 5-7 MPG in the gasser (based on 90's tech) and that I would want to pull an ocean boat in addition to the pick up camper.
Being frugal I bought a 2005 GMC dually with the 6.6 duramax for about $25K and enjoyed the power and usually lower costing fuel but it was totaled one year later so I replaced it with the insurance money with a 2006 Chev dually with the same 6.6 and I picked that one up for $23.5K.
Both had 150K miles on them, I had to replace the Turbo on both trucks at about 160K so that maintenance was about $2500 on each truck and the 2006 also called for a starter and a transmission control module at about 175K (along with the usual glowplug replacements).
Now we sold the pick up camper but the dually works good for us on the 32' fiver as well as the big boats and I know that I'll never buy a new truck, I'm just too cheap so I'm happy with 10 year old tech that gets the job done so if you're traveling a lot of hills I think the diesel is the way to go.
But as stated, if I were only pulling a 22' travel trailer you'll be fine with a newer gasser my rig fully loaded is about 9-10K and I feel safer with the diesel dually and it's heavy rated drive train but your results may vary.
So I shopped for weeks for a diesel because we like to travel over the cascades to eastern Oregon and beyond so with that kind of weight I knew I would probably get about 5-7 MPG in the gasser (based on 90's tech) and that I would want to pull an ocean boat in addition to the pick up camper.
Being frugal I bought a 2005 GMC dually with the 6.6 duramax for about $25K and enjoyed the power and usually lower costing fuel but it was totaled one year later so I replaced it with the insurance money with a 2006 Chev dually with the same 6.6 and I picked that one up for $23.5K.
Both had 150K miles on them, I had to replace the Turbo on both trucks at about 160K so that maintenance was about $2500 on each truck and the 2006 also called for a starter and a transmission control module at about 175K (along with the usual glowplug replacements).
Now we sold the pick up camper but the dually works good for us on the 32' fiver as well as the big boats and I know that I'll never buy a new truck, I'm just too cheap so I'm happy with 10 year old tech that gets the job done so if you're traveling a lot of hills I think the diesel is the way to go.
But as stated, if I were only pulling a 22' travel trailer you'll be fine with a newer gasser my rig fully loaded is about 9-10K and I feel safer with the diesel dually and it's heavy rated drive train but your results may vary.
