Yet another what can I tow question

Grit dog wrote:

bigcolasc wrote:
This will be my first TT and I just don't want to have white knuckle rides. I'll have the whole family loaded in the truck and I just want to be safe. I doubt we'll travel much further than 4 hours away from our home location which is Columbia, South Carolina (smack dab in the middle of the state). We'll probably hit the mountains of NC or the beaches of SC mostly.

Looking at a few campers with a UVW of 5,500.

How much other towing experience do you have?
I've had a white knuckle ride towing an air compressor or gen-set behind a 3/4 ton at a very small percentage of the trucks rated capacity and had smooth rides towing well over the capacity of many trucks.
You can make a 14klb trailer comfortable behind a 1/2 ton if loaded right and set up right (not that I'm recommending towing that much, but I may have done it once...or 20 times, lol).

More to your question, pretty much any trailer you're looking at with a 5-6klb uvw will be handled well by your truck, if set up properly.
You can obsess over every pot, pan and case of juice boxes loaded up for the trip and make multiple trips to scales and produce spreadsheets and calculate, to the pound, your loads vs your rated capacities, but in the end, that truck will pull a med size TT quite well.

What cannot be accounted for is the driver's ability and experience, which is not insurmountable. Take it slow at first, minimize distractions, practice some before loading up the family for summer vacation and it'll be easy going.