Montana 5th wheel

dstephens wrote:
Ok I give up. I had weighed the old truck (2002 2500hd) and I was not overweight at that time. According to the info in this thread, I should be able to pull a small utility trailer. HA Ha. I will try to get over to the scales today to weigh my truck. I am still looking at numbers to make sure that I don't go overweight.
I appreciate all the comments.

I think it is time to end this thread. Again, thanks to all of you for you information.

Denverdale

Some people do not worry to much about the trucks GVWR and tow over that number, myself included. My truck has the optional LT265/75R16E rated to 3415 lbs each, so I have 6830 lbs of capacity on the rear axle without going over the tire rating.

The real issue with 5th wheels is that 99.5-99.9 percent of the Pin(hitch) weight goes on the rear axle. Additionally most SRW trucks RGAWR is set by the tires installed. So once you know the actual rear axle weight ready to tow, subtract that number from your RGAWR to know how much pin weight you can handle without going over the tire rating.

Going over the tire rating is not good!

Now take the new trailers GVWR and multiply it by 20% to get an idea of what your pin weight will be fully load. So for a 16400 GVWR trailer the pin weight can be around 3280 pounds. There in is the problem if this much pin weight puts you over the tire rating. We already know that it is more weight than the trucks carrying capacity.

That is why I stated watch out for Cardinals pin weight, as it will be more than the standard 20%. You need to go to the Montana forum and find out more about that models real world pin weight.

This document lists some tow ratings.

What is the size and rating of the tires on the truck. It appears from the document above it could have 17, 18 or 20" tires. 18's and 20's tend to have higher ratings if they are similar to what RAM is using with 3640 lbs capacity each.
Chris