Weight Rating Spreadsheet
Anyone develop a weight rating spreadsheet? There is a constant flood of questions of "can I tow this?" It should be pretty simple to set up a spreadsheet where you enter the door jam info and the ...
Forum Discussion
fla-gypsy wrote:kaydeejay wrote:edbehnke wrote:I don't think folks are overthinking.
I am a 5th wheeler and it seems to me that people are overthinking what they can tow.
take a look around you, 95% of the trucks pulling 5th wheels are 3/4 ton. my opinion is, unless you are pulling a 15K ton or larger (like a designer suite), just use a 3/4 ton or one ton.
What I do believe is that there is a gradual realization out there that CARRYING capacity is just as important as (if not more important than) towing capacity for a fifth wheel.
Then there are the two camps...
1) Those that do not believe in manufacturer load ratings
and
2) Those that do.
I'm in the second category and am loaded to within 200# of my truck GVWR with a 27' 9600# fiver.
I don't believe a typical 3/4 ton is adequate for a 15000# fiver. Not many 3/4 tons have 3000# of payload left AFTER being loaded with people, "stuff", hitch and fuel.
IMHO a 15K fiver is verging on dually 1-ton territory.
YMMV
Put me in category 2. Those ratings are published in writing by the manufacturer as "not to exceed" for a reason. We can argue all day what that reason is (all of which will be conjecture since no maker is going to tell you everything) but it will not change the ratings or the wording and could be costly if not followed. To the best of my knowledge there are 10 ratings to be concerned with (9 on the truck+the hitch rating). GVWR, GCWR, FAWR, RAWR, Max Payload, Max tow capacity, wheel weight rating, tire weight rating, receiver rating and not part of the truck but just as important; Max Hitch capacity. My truck and trailer come under on all 10 with the closest to capacity being the tongue weight on the receiver. It is not impossible to figure out with a little work
X3...I'm easily under GVWR and way under my trucks RAWR, I believe Design and Manufacturing Engineers know more about their truck then we do.... Oh....Let's not be the "self righteous weight cops " that was alluded to above...just leads to ugly name calling by people that are old enough to know better:)
