Weight of a truck camper

I have never seen so much poor advice on here.
No, there will not be fitment issues. A '96 F250 has the same standard size and width box as all the earlier trucks did. There is no camper that won't fit.

What do you think that camper rode on when it was new? There was no such thing as an F350 dually pickup in 1978. Yeah there was an F350 pickup but it was very rare and wasn't a dually. Everyone used 3/4 tons.

Come on guys, this is just a 9-footer on an F250. There's literally zero problem here. That F250 is perfect for the job, those two units were made for each other like toast and butter.

I would advise anyone with a truck and wanting to carry a heavy truck camper is to weigh the trucks front and rear axles seperately with close attention to the trucks rear axle/wheel/tire load rating as Fords 6084 RAWR will carry most if not all the TCs weight. A single gross weight doesn't tell us much.
If the F250 has the heavy service package then it is the same truck as the F350 srw 6830 RAWR (cab and drivetrains being the same).

Someone keeps refering to a payload sticker. The payload sticker became mandatory in '06 so our older trucks did not have a payload number. Back then as now the trucks axle/wheels/tires/spring packs determined how much load the truck can safely carry.

Your truck should handle it fine. I have the same camper in a 1997 f250. According to our post you have weighted the truck. If your weight of the truck with you and a full tank of gas in it is 5460lbs then you have 3340lbs of payload available till you are over the gvwr.

I weight out at around 6000lbs depending on fuel load and I have a vanguard 96t which is 9.6 feet. I have not weighed it. I have seen a couple times on the internet that these campers weigh about 2000lbs. I would take that with a grain of salt. When I load the camper, the rear springs only sag about 1 inch.

Most people on here think of new campers. A new camper in the 9 foot range would be way too heavy for our trucks. Also our trucks are a lot lighter then a more modern truck as well.

This has been hashed out a lot. There are some here who are true weight rating only folks and some who look at all the other surrounding facts and feel there is more lee way (I am one of those). I am posting a link to a thread I started on this that has both sides of this argument:

http://www.rv.net/forum/index.cfm/fuseaction/thread/tid/29103585/gotomsg/29218722.cfm#29218722

Yes indeed, do watch the fit before you buy it. I had a similar aged camper and at the back where the toilet was it did not fit into the back of a /94 truck. After checking it out carefully and determining that it was indeed about 1.5 inches too wide, I took the framing off that small section of wall, and the insulation, and just put a thin sheet of plywood there instead. It fit then, but only just.

No, the payload printed on door sticker is generated by Ford lawyers and has nothing to do with engineering.
Just like 130 mph governor on 180 mph cars.

what is a 'weight ratio'?

Payload given by Ford is the payload limit. It takes into account the axle loads, suspension, tires, etc. All done for you by the engineers at Ford.

Of course you can exceed it if you want.

Do you care about weigh ratio the truck is register for, or do you care about actual load capacity?
Check your rear axle rating, scale the rear and since most of the weight of 9' camper goes on rear axle, you have easy number to compare.

A '99 wouldn't have any sort of "payload sticker." They only recently started doing that.

The REAL way to find out how much payload you have is to take the truck to a scale, and have it weighed. Subtract the truck's scaled weight from 8800lbs, and that is your payload.

It probably isn't 3800lbs, but should be more than 1500lbs. I would expect somewhere between 1800-2500lbs.

3800lbs is the "added helper springs, upgraded to 19.5 commercial truck tires, don't care about factory ratings" payload capacity.

Older campers tend to be lighter if they're original. Once someone goes in and does a "remodel" probably using conventional materials and no consideration for conserving weight, that's all out the window. Any original data plate is meaningless, and odds are the camper is much heavier than originally built.

One consideration you should have with an extremely old camper like that is FITMENT. That 1978 camper is designed to fit in a 1978 truck. Ford built trucks with basically the same box dimensions from the 1970's up through 1996. In 1997 Ford shrunk the box size on the F150 and followed suit on the F250/F350 in 1999. So your box is smaller and the 1978 camper may not fit without heavy modification. Be aware of that.

With a 250 you would be pushing it loading an 8 foot camper on. Typical of that age you would be lucky to gave a true 1500 pounds of available payload. Start looking for one of the 8 foot pop up campers and you should be good to go.