Weight of hitch for calculating tongue weight
We have neither TT or TV,so I am trying to determine if the Ford Expedition will work for some of trailers we are looking at. A F150 will not fit in our garage, so that is out. Expedition: max tongue ...
Forum Discussion
dnhx wrote:
Thanks everyone for the advice. Obviously, the TT and TV combination I am looking at is marginal. We would have to be very vigilant on the weight in the TT and the TV, and it may not be worth it, as you have said stuff accumulates.
Although I understand why I should use the GVWR, I am a bit confused. The trailer we were looking at is 25' 9" and has a dry weight of 5240 and a GVWR of 7200. But the next trailer bigger is 28', dry weight of 5780 (over 500 lbs heavier) and has the same GVWR of 7200. Another TT we looked at is the Minnie Winnie 2351, which is 25' 10" comparable layout and options and has a dry weight of 5100 (150 less than the Keystone) but a GVWR of 7620. The Minnie Winnie 1801 is 21' 11", dry weight of 3780 but also has a GVWR of 7620 lbs. (not sure how you can stuff over 3200 lbs in a 22' trailer.) If you take 15% of 7620, you get 1143, which is actually over the F150 max tongue load of 1130.
I do not seeing the correlation between GVWR the trailer size and thus how much stuff you can put in it.
Pretty darn simple to explain.
The longer and heavier trailer has LESS AVAILABLE CARGO WEIGHT to the tune of 500 lbs less. That means although the trailer is longer YOU can put LESS cargo into that trailer.
There are a lot of good intentioned folks here that insist that you simply add up and estimate all the cargo you are taking and add to the dry weights. While you might START out with good intentions doing it this way you will SOON find yourself WAY OVERLOADED on your tow vehicle and that is a bad thing.
My take is to use the GVWR as your measuring stick for buying (even though your trailer could have a high Cargo rating you may never use). Using the GVWR of the trailer ENSURES you will NEVER exceed the vehicles towing capacity and GIVES YOU ROOM to grow in the years to come.
Keeping in mind a trailer with a GVWR of 7200 lbs the tongue CAN weigh as much as 1080 lbs (15%)...
No need to weigh and guestimate and it IS CUT AND DRY when you select by the trailer GVWR.
