Taking the plunge

mbopp wrote:
Not to rain on you parade, but if the kids bring friends I assume it's a crew cab?
Tow capacity is only part of the equation. As others have stated, you'll run out of payload first. Welcome to 1/2-ton towing.
What's the yellow payload sticker say on the truck?

And don't listen to the salesman when he says "Sure, you can tow that." His only interest is making a sale.

Ditto !!!


You need to check your tire / loading sticker (on drivers door pillar) for your cargo capacity. What ever your cargo carrying capacity (payload) is, that is your weight capacity for fuel, occupants, cargo (in the truck), weight distribution hitch, and trailer tongue weight, combined. Payload and tow capacity are eaten up by everything and everybody you put in or on the truck.

Better option -- Weigh the truck and subtract that weight from the truck's GVWR. What is left is available payload. As other have mentioned, you will run out of payload, long before you reach that exaggerated towing capacity.

If Dodge says your truck has 10,000 tow capacity, that is as long as the driver weighs 150 lbs, and he is alone without any cargo. As you load up passengers and cargo, your tow capacity and payload go down.

As others have stated, there is a lot more than overall manufacturers stated tow capacity to look at as that number is given on a best case scenario with nothing but a driver in the truck..... let's look at how to figure out what you can tow.

First load your truck up with all passengers, pets and gear that will be with you when camping. Now go to a local Cat scale and weigh your truck with a full tank of fuel plus all of the above mentioned items. Put the front axle on the first scale pad and the rear axle on the second scale pad. (Bring a broom handle as the button to push us at truckers height).

Now take your trucks total scaled weight and subtract it from your trucks gcwr to get your adjusted towing capacity. Trade your trucks scaled weight and subtract it from your trucks gvwr to get your available payload. Take your rear axle weight (drive axle on the paper) and subtract it from the max rawr to find out how much room you have available on your rear axle. You need to stay within all of these numbers with your loaded tt weights.

Your trailer tongue weight will be applied to your trucks payload. The dry tongue weight listed is kind of a useless number as it commonly does not include propane, battery etc. Your ideal tongue weight is 13-15% of the trailers loaded (not dry weight). You will not be taking a empty or dry trailer camping. Since you don't know how much weight you will be putting in, it is safer to calculate using tt gvwr, although I will tell you that on average people tend to add 1000-1500 lbs of gear, dishes, clothes etc to their tt.

The 28bh has a gvwr (dry weight + cargo capacity) of 9695 lbs. That means a worst case scenario hitch weight of 1454 lbs (15% of 9695) although you will not likely be that heavy. 13% of gvwr would be 1260 lbs. If we just added 1500 lbs to dry weight you would be looking at tt weight of 8226 lbs loaded and hitch weight of 1069 - 1233 lbs. That is a lot of trailer for a 1500 level truck. If it is within all ratings then do it but if not then keep looking.

Not to rain on you parade, but if the kids bring friends I assume it's a crew cab?
Tow capacity is only part of the equation. As others have stated, you'll run out of payload first. Welcome to 1/2-ton towing.
What's the yellow payload sticker say on the truck?

And don't listen to the salesman when he says "Sure, you can tow that." His only interest is making a sale.

Score300 wrote:
I have a 2013 ram 1500 outdoorsman model. It has a 3.92 gear and was equipped for towing. We do like the extra sleeping space cause the kids like to bring friends on our trips. I'm aware that it's going to be a heavy load for this truck, but are you saying it CAN'T handle it? If not, what size do you suggest?

No, not saying it can't do it but am saying you need to find out. You needed to do it, nobody on this board can do it for you, we can only estimate which isn't good enough because you are going to be really close if it is even possible.

That trailer is going to have probably around 1200# tongue weight. Add the weight of your passengers and gear to that number to get your estimated load. Ideally this load will be within your rated available payload (listed on your door sticker), should be within your GVWR (you got to weigh your truck and then add the estimated load to the weight weighed, GVWR is also on door stickers), and you have to be under your axle capacity to legally be on the road (determine the same way except add you load to the rear axle weigh weighed, axle rating is also on your drivers door jam)

My guess you will over your payload rating and GVWR. May or may not meet Axle rating. Only way to know is get your truck weighed at CAT scale and do the math. Also check your trucks hitch rating, make sure it can handle the 9,000# trailer weigh with 1,200# tongue weigh using WDH.

I have a 2013 ram 1500 outdoorsman model. It has a 3.92 gear and was equipped for towing. We do like the extra sleeping space cause the kids like to bring friends on our trips. I'm aware that it's going to be a heavy load for this truck, but are you saying it CAN'T handle it? If not, what size do you suggest?

do you need 4 bunk beds? if not seems sort of like a waste of space to me.
bumpy

Hi and welcome to the forum! Your sig doesn't say what your Tow Vehicle is but those trailers are going to have tongue weights in range of 1,000# or maybe more. Put another 5 or 6 hundred pounds of people and gear in the TV means you need a load carrying capacity of pushing 2,000#.

In other words forget about manufactures towing capacity ratings. You run out of load capacity long before you hit that tow capacity due to the heavy nature of TT tongue weights (12 - 15% of loaded TT). Those trailers are 3/4 ton needed.

We did the same thing except we went from a tent to a Hideout 26BHS. I agree that it is probably not the best camper on the market, but for the price, we couldn't go wrong. We had it for 9 months and there are a couple cosmetic items that need fixed, but I am thinking that is because it was a show TT that we picked up from the Hershey Camper & RV show. CW is currently fixing some of those issues and didn't give us any hassle about it. Nothing serious has happened yet (knock on wood). All in all, we are happy with it being our first TT and will probably upgrade in about 5 years.

One thing, I wished I payed more attention to the TV ratings. I had a F150 Super Crew and it towed it, but it was not comfortable towing it. The 12yo F150 died so I ended up buying a F250 and have no issues at all now (other than getting 7.6 mpg.)