What can my Suburban safely tow?

handye9 wrote:
Forget about advertised tow ratings. They are a pipe dream. When they are calculated, there is no room for weight of any aftermarket accessories, passengers, or cargo. That's not how we as consumers, go camping.

In order to figure out your real world tow capacity, you need to look at the tire / loading sticker on your drivers door post. It will have a number for max cargo / passenger weight (AKA payload). That is the vehicle's capacity to carry the combined weight of aftermarket accessories, people, cargo, weight distributing hitch, and tongue weight from the trailer.

Take that number and subtract the weight of all your passengers, all your cargo, and 100 lbs for a WD hitch. The amount remaining is the vehicle's capacity to carry tongue weight from a trailer.

Divide this remaining capacity number by .15. That will tell you the approximate "loaded" trailer weight, that you may be able to tow. Keep in mind, towing at, or close to the max, can be an unpleasant experience.


Example:

Say the vehicle has 1300 lbs payload, you have 600 lbs of people, 100 lbs of hitch, and 100 lbs of cargo.

1300 - 800 = 500 lbs of payload available
500 / .15 = 3333 lbs loaded trailer weight
(this same vehicle with no passengers, accessories, or cargo, and a 150 lb driver, would have capacity to tow a 7000 lbs trailer)

Thank you! That's very helpful! :)
The weird thing is that my sticker doesn't show that number, only GVWR 7400llbs GAWR FRT and GAWR RR. I tried looking up the empty weight of my vehicle online and it looks like it's around 5600lbs, that isn't necessarily the true weight with the options in our car, but using that number I get a 1800lb payload.
So assuming we have 1,000lbs of payload available I'd be looking at around 6,600lbs loaded trailer weight. Is that right?