Pulling a 15500 lb 5er

Cummins12V98 wrote:
If you want comfort, Dually.

A new 3500 RAM would probably be fine but reality is your pin will be closer to 25%.

Agreed. Our new to us Corsair had a published dry weight of 12,975 lbs with 2,300 lbs pin weight. We weighed it on our way home from picking it up in Edmonton and found that it is pushing 14,000 lbs with 3,500 lbs pin weight, and that was with very little in the trailer. Our truck handles it excellent but I would recommend a 1 ton dually for that trailer. For what it's worth we really love our Ram with the Cummins diesel!

Hi,

If you already have the truck, then take it to a scale, and look at the GVWR. You will also have front and rear axle ratings. Basically if your rear axle is say 3,000 pounds and it rated at 6,050, then you can carry about 3000 pounds on the rear axle. If the empty weight is say 6,500, and the GVWR is 9,200 pounds, then the maximum of cargo, hitch, and passengers is only about 2,700 pounds.

So lets say that the hitch you pick out is 200 pounds, and your passengers add up to 500 more pounds, then you will have about 2,000 left for the pin weight of the trailer.

20% of a 10,000 GVW trailer is 2,000 pounds or about the limit to your 3/4 ton truck.

However lets say that you have a 4 wheel drive, diesel truck that is a crewcab, and you will have 4 passengers total of about 700 pounds. This means that your 200 pound hitch, 700 pounds of passengers, and curb weight around 7,200 with the 4X4 and crewcab you will only have about 1,100 pounds for the pin weight. No fifth wheel will fit into that range.

So if you have heavy options, then start looking for a heavier rated truck, or travel trailer with 1,000 - 1,200 pounds of hitch weight.

Good luck!

Fred.

mikemc53 wrote:
Still haven't settled in on a particular rv or format yet but we really like looking. Stopped in at a dealership today and the salesman showed us a used 5er, a 40 ft Komfort (by Dutchmen) which had a GVWR of 15500. I commented that this wasn't a unit for a 3/4 ton but was told (obviously) that it is doable. Now I know little about this stuff but I am rather sure that at 15500 lb with an approximate pin weight of 3000 lb that the 3/4 ton would not handle this at all. I would like to know, though, what it would take to pull something of this size, comfortably?

I understand that without all of the data it is kind of open-ended but, in general for a 40 ft 15500 lb 5er, what would we be looking at?

No way ANY 3/4 ton could handle that kind of load. You are probably looking at a dually 1-ton.
You need 3000# payload for the pin, 200# for the hitch plus driver, passengers and fuel. A 4000# load is not impossible.
MAYBE, just MAYBE a new SRW 1-ton, but you need a low ratio (15-18%) pin weight and travel light for that to work.
If you want to be SURE you are OK and not have to worry about weights, then a dually is peace of mind.

I have a very similarly sized cyclone toy hauler. All I can say is that it tows very comfortably with my dually... And an old one at that. 2001 f350.

If you want comfort, Dually.

A new 3500 RAM would probably be fine but reality is your pin will be closer to 25%.

It's not the GVWR it's the UVW plus what you put in it. You can find 15,500lb GVW 5ers with 5000lbs of CCC or 2500lbs of CCC. Me, when shopping I look at the yellow ticker on the door. I know I carry 1500lbs of gear. I add that to the yellow sticker and that's my GVW. I then look at the CCC that's usually on the same sticker. I want that as high as possible.

For me it's not what the 5er can carry when maxed out it's what I will be carrying when traveling.

My opinion without any real information - this is 1-ton Dually territory. Could SRW pull it probably but this is dually comfort territory. But just my opinion.