Anybody consider a semi for a tow vehicle?

ksss wrote:

wintersun wrote:
These are Class 8 trucks with a GVWR of 33,000 lbs. or more. I can no more see using one of these to tow a 13,000 lb. 5th wheel travel trailer load than using a 1-ton DRW truck to tow a 300 lb. kayak trailer.

More than 80% of the people I see pulling 5th-wheel trailers are doing so with a SRW truck. A 3/4 ton pickup is all that is needed even for the 13,500 lb. gross vehicle weight trailer, and very few 5th wheel travel trailers exceed even 11,000 lb.s gross vehicle weight.

My 2500HD pickup ton truck is rated for towing a 5th wheel trailer load of up to 17,300 lbs., so why would I go buy a Freightliner M2? I don't know about what you can get for $10,000 but a used M2 106 in good condition sells for a great deal more. Current ones listed on www.truckpaper.com are priced at $80K for a 2007.

Every aspect of operating and maintaining the truck is going to be three times as expensive as a pickup and forget about parking it anywhere except on the street (where laws allow). I could not see one of these trucks pulling a 5th wheel getting into 99% of the state and national campgrounds. OK is you like to stay at highway rest areas and at truck stops.

You should ask yourself if these trucks are such a good solution why is that nobody is using them for this purpose? Look again when you see one of these trucks towing a 5th wheel and you will notice that it is pulling a large horse trailer or commercial trailer or multi vehicle trailer and not a travel trailer.

This my thought as well. I own and run class 8's. I personally would not put an 8 on an RV but to each his own. The biggest issue for a person with an average bank account is simply the costs involved. It is all good until you have to have them worked on (before anyone buys one they really need to investigate engine, tranny rebuilds), while I totally get they are made to run, they do break down. Buy a newer one and you get to deal with DPF issues, no small issue with someone who pulls an RV where the engine is barely able to stay warm pulling such a light load. Tires are expensive and there are a lot of them. When your making money with them, the costs of running them is simply a part of business (but it still hurts when you have major component failure), running one simply for recreation would be unacceptable to me. Lastly it is not necessary, with the capability of these new pickup based tow rigs, but if you want to play "big rig trucker" on the weekends these can fill that need. You just need to make sure you have a "big rig checking account" when the truck goes to the shop.

While this might be true as a comparison of the two truck types being used at the optimal or upward limits of their respective duty cycles but certainly not true for two trucks with the lighter duty one being used closer to it's upper end and the heavy duty one never again even being required to breath hard.

Secondly; as we've all witnessed with the lighter duty species, when (not if)they have a design problem that comes back to bite their owners it can sometimes wipe out that cost advantage tenfold. There are probably more than a few Ford 6 lire diesel owners who went through the head bolt stretch, followed by the intercooler plug-up followed by the......... and so on and so on debacle with carrying the full costs of those with their own wallet to the tune of possibly $10K in associated expenses and doing without their truck for months at a time.

Costs can be significant when one is unfortunate enough to have a light duty diesel purchased from a dealer with a less than stellar mechanic pool for those diesels whereas commercial guys cannot tolerate significant income loss through downtime garnered from a mechanic typical of the "let's throw this part at it and see what that does" genre.

My own experience with a Chevy Duramax of the early variety and an International 530DTE showed overall maintenance costs being cheaper for the International considering same time span of ownership, following all the recommended mileage based scheduled required maintenance. Just the stupid fuel filter alone was an eye opener with costing me over $80 clams for the dinky little spin on Duramax specific thing and a paltry $6.00 for the trash can sized International cartridge. Brakes for a pick-up being tasked with performing a significant portion of the downhill retarding of an RV trailer are almost a bi-annual thing while the shoes for the International were still good to go after four times the towing mileage with a far heavier trailer and truck combo.

It's all relative to the duty cycle they're being asked to perform.