Bumper ball

:)

Thats a great match to your trailer, perfect for the Sierra's with Ecoboost.

We wound up with an F150 Ecoboost. Gear ratio somewhere about 3.92, I think, and high torque. The payload rating on the doorpost is about 1400, I think - it's late and it's been a long day and I'm not remembering all the numbers - sorry. I'll look them up and post them tomorrow.

Anyway, we feel a lot better about our ability to tow our trailer. We aren't planning any off-road trailering - we're sissy campers and like our hookups. Our plan is to do a short trip about once a month, maybe a few days exploring the area, and a longer one - a few weeks - every year. So I think this will work out well for us, and we have a beautiful dark red truck to drive around town.

Thanks to all for your generosity in sharing all you know. We appreciate it enormously - my husband laughs because I won't make a move without asking "the guys." You've all been invaluable.

MargaretB... you are right on the edge of benefitting from a 3/4 ton.

It isn't just the 6,000 lbs of trailer and the 780 lbs of tongue weight... it is the 22' x 8' x 8' sail that you will be dragging through buffeting winds from all directions. 60 square feet of Frontal Area is a huge drain on towing capacity, and yet it is rarely considered until the anemic tow vehicle is upgraded. Ford used to mention Frontal Area in their towing guides in years past, but I'm not sure what they do today.

I have several bumper pull trailers... a 16', a 20', and a 24'... all enclosed. I have some experience with actual tongue weights of these trailers, loaded and unloaded. Based on this experience, I HIGHLY recommend that you MEASURE tongue weight with a scale... do not rely on any type of rule of thumb percentage based estimation, such as 11% or 12% etc. Those figures are fiction, compared to ACTUAL tongue weights I have measured... which surprised me.

For example, remembering back to when I first received my Sherline tongue weight scale about 10 years ago, I had ball park estimated the tongue weight on my loaded 16' trailer to be 800 lbs. It turned out to be almost 1,300 lbs. Weight cannot be seen, nor should it be estimated. The best practice is to MEASURE your tongue weight, and then choose your hitch rating and spring bars for your weight distribution system accordingly.

You listed a bunch of trucks in an earlier post. My favorite pick of the ones you listed is the 2014 GM truck with the 5.3L. Apart from towing, that truck will ride and drive empty like a dream. That truck is quieter than my electric hybrid car! The 2014 5.3L has all the technologies to save fuel... variable timing, cylinders shutting off, etc. However, you might be on the edge of it's capacity if your trailer weight drifts higher than 7,000 lbs.

You mentioned truck brands, and engine displacement sizes. That's good info to help people here help you choose. But there is one more important data point that you should add to your spreadsheet of considerations: Rear Axle Ratio. The same truck with the same engine will perform quite differently if fitted with a 4.10 rear axle ratio, versus a 3.42 axle ratio. The higher the number, the lower (deeper) the gearing.

The deeper the gearing, the more towing power you will have, which will effect your entrance into freeways when getting up to speed to safely merge with traffic. It will also effect the number of gears that are useable to you in your transmission when pulling up a grade. If you have too tall of a rear axle ratio, such as a 3.42, you will have to downshift your transmission sooner than you would with a deeper rear ratio like a 3.73 or a 4.10. This effectively gives you more useable gears on the grade, which lowers engine rpm and in cabin noise level through your pull, since you won't have to downshift to 2nd as early as you would with a taller gear.

Keep looking. For a budget between 21K and 31K, I'd like to believe there are options out there that would afford you a larger margin of safety when towing. That being said, if you only plan on towing 10% of the time with the truck, and the other 90% of use is as a daily driver while empty, then you might want to stick with the 150/1500 size... but get deep gears, know your actual tongue and trailer weights, and see if the truck's towing specs will match your application.

This has probably been covered before, but receiver hitches have 2 ratings; one with a WD hitch and one without. If you run a WD hitch, you go with the higher rating on the receiver hitch.

Quick story, we towed a 12,000lb (boat and trailer weight) with around 1200lbs tongue weight on a bumper hitch. Originally it had 1" shank on ball, but was later upgraded to 1 1/4" shank.


Rest of story, Pa was a mechanical engineer and could design and weld things very well. He fabricated reinforcements under the bumper and attaching to the last 3' of the frame on each side. He used 1/2" Bethlehem (sp) steel plate and grade 8 1/2" bolts with double nuts. It was way overbuilt and handled the load fine.

Generally speaking, factory bumper hitches are not rated to pull much.

MargaretB wrote:
But we're still puzzled by why so many big hunky trucks with factory tow packages and hitches still have a hitch weight limit of 600#. I know the WD hitch can increase that, but it seems pretty low.

F-150's and 1500 series pickups are hardly, "big hunky trucks".

Even moving up to a Siverado 2500HD will get you a hitch with a 2,000 pound rating, without a weight distributing hitch, for instance. It is all a matter of engineering and mechanics.

Yes, I'm referring to the receiver.

MargaretB wrote:

But we're still puzzled by why so many big hunky trucks with factory tow packages and hitches still have a hitch weight limit of 600#. I know the WD hitch can increase that, but it seems pretty low.

All the vehicles on your list have receivers rated at 600 pounds weight carrying and 900-1200 pounds with WD. What do you think is low? 600 pounds of TW without using a WD or the ~900-1200 pounds using WDH?

600 pounds of TW (weight carrying) increases rear axle weight by about 900 pounds and decreases steering axle by about 300 pounds over no trailer. That can get close to many vehicles' rear axle rating as well as affect handling.

My opinion is that all full sized half ton and smaller class vehicles benefit from a WDH around 400 pounds of TW for pulling a high profile trailer.

TV Receivers (not hitches) of the class you are looking at has two ratings

You are only looking at the dead weight rating...not the WD-Hitch rating, which
is much higher than the dead weight rating. Typically of the class of receivers
you are looking at will have a 'dead weight' rating of 500 lbs. I
posted several receiver ratings labels just to show you that there
are two ratings...one dead weight and the other WD-Hitch

So you know this salesman and the best is just tell him he is ignorant. If he
argues, then he was lying or now dumb for not allowing himself to learn

Taught to 'manage my regrets' in all things and say that to you.

Look at all of the work you are 'trying' to make a just barely rated for TV
work for the trailer you want. All based on 'car' attributes so high on your
have to have list. Why said look for a smaller trailer if you want
these half ton TVs, or get a bigger TV if you have to have that trailer
You 'can' have both, but then decide if you believe in the ratings or
not for the 'should' you, or do it well

Why suggested you look for those fake half tons made just for folks
who should have a bigger TV, but insist on only a half ton. Plus
you only use 'half ton' marketing...I truly do NOT know which 'half
ton' you are referencing..as there is about 2,000Lb GVWR spread
among half tons...the current range I know is from 6,200 GVWR to
8,200 GVWR and the formula is GCWR => TV + TT (actual loaded weights)

Think back on all that after you have miles of towing in the
Sierra's. Hope you make the right choice weighting your 'car'
preferences over 'tow vehicle' metrics. If you lived and plan to only
stay in the flat lands...your choices will have a higher chance of
working well enough...but in the Sierra's, that is another scenario.

On that, all things designed with a 'rating' has that rating not for the good
days when a riding lawn mower can do it (a half ton 'can' tow the Shuttle) but
for the day when Mr Murphy crosses your path. Manhandling the situation with
a just barely rated for it is not something I'll ever want to be in

See your learning path via postings and congratulate you but add that
you need to use the proper terms. Close, but that leads to potential
confusion and mostly from the advisors here

That towing and ratings is a 'system' of many components and sub-systems.
You are going to chase your tail if only looking at one component or
sub-system without the rest of the system.

A 'hitch' is NOT the part that has the ratings you are referring to in this
thread. The ratings you refer to are for the 'receiver'.

Typically the 'hitch' is the part that hooks up to the 'receiver'.

Please block me if you don't want to hear this, but I'm no just posting
for you, the OP, but for folks out there that will/might read this
as they come up the learning curve.