Do this my Friend: look at the yellow sticker inside your Escalade driver's side door jamb and it will say "don't go around loading any more weight than this in this here vehicle", or something to that effect. There might just be another sticker that tells you to reduce that weight even further. That's close enough to the payload of the Cadillac. Take a look at the dry hitch weight of the travel trailer of your dreams and add in a weight distribution hitch (maybe 70 - 100 lbs.) and a battery and propane tank (guess in the 100 lb. range) and add those two weights (170 - 200 lbs.) to the dry hitch weight. You know from that brief foray into math you'll have to deduct at least that much from your payload, added to the human weight in the car and anything else you decide to carry along with you. You're estimating here, but if you're around or over the payload limit you might just want to think about rethinking the trailer. Reason I'm such a know-it-all is because I just went through this same thing with a Nissan Frontier. I had a payload of only 1213 lbs., and when I conservatively estimated the weight I would carry in the truck at 600 lbs. I went to the calculator and realized a dry hitch weight of 413 lbs. would stretch me to the truck's absolute capacity (600 lbs. for us and our personal goods added to that pesky 170 - 200 lbs. propane/battery/WDH, and then that total subtracted from the 1213 lb. payload). And that's without anything in the trailer transferring more weight to the hitch. That may leave you with some tight parameters depending on what the yellow sticker says. My own personal experience was to look for trailers I could semi-confidently handle (Venture Sonic Lite) but they weren't all that appealing (a bit cramped) so I bit down hard on the bullet and went all in for an f150 - 2067 lb. payload, 9000 lb. towing capacity. I kicked and screamed, but what I ultimately gave in to was the fact that a small, light trailer would set us back almost as much cash as the next size up, and that next size up is the sweet spot for us. The trailer you're looking for is the trailer I'm looking for and I found my Holy Grail in the FunFinder/MPG/Radiance line. We want one of those 7500 lb. gross weight trailers - not too big, not too small - and the shopping possibilities opened up by the Ford changed my perspective on this whole trailer thing. We haven't bought yet but looking at trailers is kind of fun now that I'm not weight-shy. I can look that Minnie right in the eye, spit on the shoes of a 900 lb. hitch weight - I ain't scared anymore. It was really hard to go down to the Ford dealer and trade my perfect-for-me Frontier on a too-big-for-me f150, but I figured if I was going to plunk down $20-25,000 on a trailer I didn't want the tail wagging the dog. Anyways, that's my ten cents.
