Winnebago minnie construction
Long time reader first time poster. My family of four is in the market for a travel trailer. We have quite a bit of experience with travel trailers as we have always had free access to a forest river ...
Forum Discussion
First of all, you need to have a better understanding of weights. You cannot take the max towing weight and subtract dry weights and get any meaningful numbers.
You also have not mentioned the payload of your truck, which is on a sticker on the driver’s door jamb. Take that number and subtract the weight of all passengers, though it’s more accurate to go to a scale and get actual weights. After this bit of math, you now have the amount of weight you can put on the truck, including cargo inside and in the bed, WD hitch and tongue weight.
I found the best way of guesstimating tongue weight was to take 12% of the gross trailer weight. So that would be about 840 pounds for the Winnie.
For example, let’s say your family weighs 500 pounds and the payload is 1600 pounds. That leaves 1100 pounds. Now subtract the max tongue weight of 840 and you’re left with 260 pounds of gear in the truck.
As you can see, the dry weights never figured into it at all.
When you do all the figuring, then you’ll have a good idea if your truck is capable.
I apologize if the above seems condescending, I have ex-teacher syndrome.
You also have not mentioned the payload of your truck, which is on a sticker on the driver’s door jamb. Take that number and subtract the weight of all passengers, though it’s more accurate to go to a scale and get actual weights. After this bit of math, you now have the amount of weight you can put on the truck, including cargo inside and in the bed, WD hitch and tongue weight.
I found the best way of guesstimating tongue weight was to take 12% of the gross trailer weight. So that would be about 840 pounds for the Winnie.
For example, let’s say your family weighs 500 pounds and the payload is 1600 pounds. That leaves 1100 pounds. Now subtract the max tongue weight of 840 and you’re left with 260 pounds of gear in the truck.
As you can see, the dry weights never figured into it at all.
When you do all the figuring, then you’ll have a good idea if your truck is capable.
I apologize if the above seems condescending, I have ex-teacher syndrome.
