Empty Nest, Soon wrote:
It is tough finding a good floor plan when you don’t fit the niche that defines the highest volume market for your particular type of RV.
In our case, we’re a retired couple. We want to travel some. We like spending time in the mountains (National Forest) near here hiking, biking, and fishing. We want a nice kitchen, walk-around bed, bedroom dresser. Our wish list pretty much fits the bill for a fifth wheel. I can’t consider a fifth wheel because my bad back won’t stand the harsh ride from a HD truck, and besides I need the bed of the truck for lots of other things on a daily basis and cluttering it up with a hitch doesn’t work. And, I have a hard time with the alternative idea of buying a dedicated HD truck that would get used for nothing else but towing a fifth wheel.
I would love to keep it simple and find a new TT with more room without giving up some of the things that have made our current little TT so good.
The toughest thing to find in a TT has been bedroom dresser drawers. Our little 19-foot box has a dresser with 6 drawers across the front and a walk-around queen bed. That part is great. We refuse to give up drawers and live out of a suitcase.
It seems that when TT’s are made a little bigger the first thing to be added is a sofa, maybe some side chairs, too, and an entertainment center with maybe a fake fireplace. A couple of comfortable side chairs would be okay, but the rest of that stuff is of no value to us when camping. We go camping to get outdoors. Our evening entertainment is more likely to be sitting outside by a fire.
I don't know of even one half-ton towable TT with a few dresser drawers made today.
Since we cannot do a fifth wheel and it seems impossible to find a suitable TT floor plan, we may need to go to a Class A where we can at least have a little kitchen space and some drawers to put our clothes in.
This is frustrating.
Wayne
There are quite a few floorplans in a trailer that would work for you. You would need a bed slide (for the storage and dresser in the bedroom), and then maybe a rear lounge type layout. The issue of course will be TT length and weight...a bed slide layout is likely to be at least 35 ft long and weigh 7500lbs dry. Ie, a 1/2 ton truck is not going to do for a TT that long and maybe 8500-9000lbs rolling down the road.
While at the show yesterday, talking with a rep from the largest local dealer around here and we were talking weights, and lengths and differences between fifths and trailers. I told him I had a 2013 1500 and was selling it for a 2014 3500 because of my limited payload capacity....he went on to say my 1500 could tow the 34ft BH trailer we were standing in....it had a yellow sticker weight of 8260 I think. He said they use WD hitches and that "pretty much eliminated the tongue weight on my truck". I almost laughed out loud and proceeded to thank him and left. It is true...it seems they will tell you anything and everything to get a sale...sad state of affairs really
