Brand New - looking for advice

One thing that may help some is look at the Hi-Lo type trailers. Still has hard sides, but no sail effect.

So now you ask what can I tow? Well load your explorer like you would to go camping with all passengers, pets and gear that will be in it when towing plus a full tank of fuel and ho weigh it. You can go to www.catscale.com for a local truck scale or try the local dump or feed store for a scale. Take the scaled weight and subtract it from the gcwr to get your adjusted towing capacity. Take the scaled weight and subtract it from your tv gvwr to get your available payload. The tongue weight of the tt must be accounted for in your payload. The final thing to check is your hitch ratings. And remember the salesman will tell you can tow that no problem even if it is a 6000 lb dry trailer and you have a tv rated for 5000 lbs. Don't trust the salesman, do your own research. Best of luck to you.

....and you don't want a trailer, when loaded takes up your limit. I'm towing my limit, which works great on flat land. When I go up a hill, I wish I had more power to spare.

First truck and trailer... Easy to purchase more trailer than you can tow.. Now that I have some experience, my next truck and trailer will be more practical.

Suggestion: Go very small on your trailer, or wait until you can get a bigger truck.

You are going to be very limited. I think with a family of 5 and not wanting a pup or a htt you are going to need a larger tow vehicle. Chances are very high that the weight of your family has eaten up all the payload the explorer had available. The problem you need to understand is a vehicle tends to be more limited by its payload as the payload has to absorb the weight of all vehicle options, occupants, pets and gear in and on the tv as well as the loaded tongue weight (not dry tongue weight). so basically, what I'm saying is the statement my tv can tow x lbs is not really a true statement. Your tv might be able to tow 5000 lbs with a 150 lb driver and nothing else in the vehicle if it is the stripped down model and the trailer you are towing has less than 10% tongue weight and a small surface area. None of this will be true in your case. You have 5 family members, you are looking at a travel trailer with a large frontal surface area (think giant sail behind you fighting against you), and the tongue weight will be 13-15% of the loaded tongue weight. Remember you are not towing a dry or unloaded trailer. On average people tend to add 1000-1500 lbs (some more, some less) of gear to a trailer. With a family your size you are likely to be on the heavier end but since you don' t know and many lightweight tt have a low cargo capacity, you are safer using tt gvwr for all calculations.