Pulling A Fifth Wheel vs. Bumper Pull

DallasSteve wrote:
I'm getting a lot of thoughtful, interesting replies. Thank you.

Horton, you said the Hensley hitch puts the pivot point further forward than a 5th wheel. How can that be? I looked at a photo of the hitch and it doesn't look significantly different than other WD hitches, to my untrained eye. I was trying to price it and it looks like the one for big trailers is around $3,000. Is that correct?

It moves the *effective* pivot point ahead. It does that with a sloppy coupling that moves side to side which changes the angle of the connection. It's difficult to describe without a diagram how that moves the effective pivot, and they seem to have removed the diagram from their website.
There are some words and a video, which does not help much on their website. I suspect (hope) that what they did was move the diagram to what they call their white paper which is linked at the bottom of this page.
They are expensive, but they are only required for vehicles with poor overhang ratios (the longer the wheelbase is compared to how far behind the rear wheels the pivot point makes that ratio better) pulling longer trailers, like SUVs which can pull a significantly longer trailer with one than without. Don't forget to include the $10,000, or much more sometimes, you pay for the larger truck required to pull a 5th wheel in an economic comparison and assuming you actually need a Hensley class hitch. A Hensley hitch is typically more of a nice to have them a requirement, unless you were pushing the boundary as I was when I had a significantly longer toyhauler than my current trailer, a hitch weight that varied considerably trip to trip, and the Explorer with its poor overhang ratio. At 35' you are looking at a pickup truck so unless you want to pay for that last little bit of perfection it's not required.