How do you know you're towing too much weight?

kodiakcanuck wrote:
If you listen to the arm chair weight police on here, you will be calculating the weight of the extra bag of chips you have in the truck and subtracting the amount of liquid you evacuated at your last pit stop. :R

The K.I.S.S principal needs to be applied. Find out what your truck is rated to tow from the manufacturer, if you have the 5.7L (I would have bought a HEMI Ram if I had that big of an engine in a SUV :B ) I suspect it does if your manufacturers spec is around 9500 lbs. Then find out the weight of you trailer, sure you can weight it fully loaded to make you feel better, or just take the dry weight and add 1000 lbs, or take the dry weight and add the max payload of the trailer to be sure.

You really arent being unreasonable in your towing. You have a larger SUV towing a 25 foot trailer that is around 6000 lbs. You will be fine!! Stop worrying...as long as you have a brake controller and weight distribution system with sway control, just get out there and enjoy camping. :)

Thanks! The trailer is 22' bumper to beginning of hitch, so about 25' 0r 26' including hitch. After reading everything here, I'm thinking we should just use it as an extra guest room and be done with it.

jerem0621 wrote:
People get bogged down in weight and completely discount the design of the actual trailer. Yes trailer weight is important but so is trailer balance, center of gravity, trailer height, aerodynamic design (or lack thereof), and trailer suspension design. A heavier lower height trailer with a smaller aerodynamic profile will tow easier than a lighter trailer with a bigger aerodynamic profile.

BTW...the payload sticker gives me ZERO confidence in its accuracy.

My payload sticker says my Van has about 1150 ish lbs....when I weighed it with my family in the van which is 800 lbs of people i fully expected and was prepared for only 200 lbs of payload based on the silly payload sticker.

My GVWR on my van is 6050 lbs...my scaled GVWR WITH a full tank of gas and my family is 5400 lbs...leaving me over 550 lbs of payload...so how come my sticker says 1150 lbs of payload..my family weighs 800 lbs yet I still have 550 lbs of payload?

I then found out that all Town & Countries share the same payload sticker...the more loaded version has the same sticker as my van. Silly payload sticker is MEANINGLESS on my van and I have the paperwork to prove it.

OP...this forum will tell you whenever you need to up-truck...regardless of how well your combo tows. I am sure you have learned by now that the volume of sheet metal on a vehicle and how tall the tires are directly correlates to how well a vehicle will tow.

Then there are the tire ratings...those are the ones that are REALLY important.

Thanks!

Jeremiah

Edited because my payload is 1150 lbs on the sticker and not 1050...

I think we'll just camp in the driveway.

camp-n-family wrote:
The only way your trailer may be too big for your Sequoia is if you far exceed your payload rating as the others have explained. The drivetrain (engine, trans and gearing) is the same as the Tundra and will handle that size and weight without a problem. Being over 3k rpm won't hurt anything either, that's where the power is.

Put the trans in manual mode (S5) with tow mode on and enjoy the ride without worries.

Bless you! We've been tossing and turning, trying to make sense of all the information being poured out here. But having been weighed, I think we're OK.

westend wrote:
In your former threads, payload capacity was explained. That is the be-all, end-all for towing capacity with your Sequoia and a travel trailer. The capacity weight number is printed on a sticker on the driver's side door jamb. Have you looked for it? It usually states," All passengers and cargo should not exceed....".

Yes, it's 1260.

PAThwacker wrote:
Look at the labels on the door piller. Look for gross combined weigh rating. Go weigh truck loaded ready to camp


Gross combined weight - truck = max trailer weight.

That's what we did. GCW was 12,260, Sequoia was 6760 = trailer wt. 5500#. Tongue was 720, or 13%.

MitchF150 wrote:
There is a lot more to towing a large, heavy trailer than just the "numbers"..

Just going by the number of different posts you've had concerning this and all the answers you have gotten, no wonder your head is spinning.. :) (you have information overload and it's all just blah, blah, blah at this point!)

What you need to do now that you have the tow vehicle and you have the travel trailer is to load it up, take it out and start learning how it's going to respond to each other... It's like introducing two new people together... Sure, their "profiles" and what you know about them make them seem like a good match, but until you sit them down and let them get to know each other, who knows how they are going to be with each other..

Same thing with your truck and trailer.. Now you also have to train YOURSELF in how to make the two get along..

That's knowing how long it takes to stop. How much pedal you have to give it to get up the hills. How to take turns a bit wider and always watching the mirrors and on and on... :)

Even thou I had been RV camping my whole childhood with my folks and have towed all sorts of trailers from coast to coast, when I got my first TT in 2002, it was a whole new world to me and I had to learn how my truck reacted to it and I also had to learn my trailer... I camped in the driveway for a whole weekend before I took it out for the first time! That really opened my eyes on what I needed to do and take, but being in my driveway, I was able to remedy it easily. I also took short trips initially to get the feel of it and was tweaking the hitch setup for the first several trips to get it "dialed in".

So, if you are still with me, notice I haven't given you any more 'numbers' to crunch... :) Just take what you got and see how YOU like it and adjust what you can and know it's NOT going to be the same driving as it is when you are not towing.. Your truck is going to work hard and you have to learn what it likes and does not like and adjust accordingly.

Good luck with it and be sure to tell us of your first adventure! :)

Mitch

THANK YOU! Yes, our heads are spinning. We did our first trip this weekend, two nights at a nice park about 90 miles away. We loaded up and got weighed before we went, and I found that my husband's knuckles changed from white to their usual pink as the miles went by. We're still working on adjusting the brake controller, but the ride was much smoother toward the end of the trip and my teeth are firmly in place. The Sequoia performed beautifully, we're learning how to back up, and we have millions of questions. But all in all, it was a positive experience. Thanks for your encouraging words.

Lantley wrote:

Andy F wrote:
Just so you know, we've been towing 6000 pounds+ for 3 years with our first generation Sequoia. You'll be fine. We've been out to Yellowstone, through the mountains, and next year we're headed down to Florida. The Sequoia is a beast of an SUV for towing, especially your 2nd gen model. I would suggest a good WD hitch like a ProPride or Hensley.

Relax and enjoy your excellent SUV and TT!

A beast compared to what? An Excursion is a beast. A 8.1 2500 Suburban is a beast. A Sequoia is 1/2 ton SUV far from beast status in my book.
Unfortunately there are no longer any beast status SUV's being produced.
The only place to find a beast is on the used market.

A beast for the size of truck and the size of engine it has, only a 4.6 liter for the 1st generation models. I wasn't trying to compare it to something much larger like an Excursion. Of course, my brother in law's Excursion was a beast for its size when it ran right and wasn't being pulled behind a tow truck! Never been an issue with the Sequoia. I'm at 126,000 miles and it drives like brand new, even while towing at or over its tow limit. I'll call it the little beast then :)

Andy F wrote:
Just so you know, we've been towing 6000 pounds+ for 3 years with our first generation Sequoia. You'll be fine. We've been out to Yellowstone, through the mountains, and next year we're headed down to Florida. The Sequoia is a beast of an SUV for towing, especially your 2nd gen model. I would suggest a good WD hitch like a ProPride or Hensley.

Relax and enjoy your excellent SUV and TT!

A beast compared to what? An Excursion is a beast. A 8.1 2500 Suburban is a beast. A Sequoia is 1/2 ton SUV far from beast status in my book.
Unfortunately there are no longer any beast status SUV's being produced.
The only place to find a beast is on the used market.

Just so you know, we've been towing 6000 pounds+ for 3 years with our first generation Sequoia. You'll be fine. We've been out to Yellowstone, through the mountains, and next year we're headed down to Florida. The Sequoia is a beast of an SUV for towing, especially your 2nd gen model. I would suggest a good WD hitch like a ProPride or Hensley.

Relax and enjoy your excellent SUV and TT!

Johno02 wrote:
Towing weight is important, but to me, stopping ability is also another very important point. Find out what your brakes (and tires) are rated for. It is really scary to have all 4 tires skidding as a trailer pushes you from behind.

That's why they put trailer brakes on the trailers to stop it, tv brakes only go so far. If the trailer is pushing you the tt brakes are not working rite.