5th Wheel with no dually truck

rieltime wrote:
Greetings, my wife and I are in the early stage of being Seniors and are in the planning stage and intend on purchasing a RV (5th Wheel?) by spring of '21. We do intend on traveling across country and beyond when we retire and could travel about 4 months out of the year. Our budget is approximately $125k including truck. I stopped in a local RV dealer and looked at the Cedar Creek Silverback and liked the 31IK floor plan. This unit has a UVW of 11,244, GVWR of 14,435 and hitch weigh of 2,435. After digging in to see what type of truck is preferred, I noticed and came to the conclusion that I really should have a 350/3500 series, diesel with a dually. I really would prefer not to go the dually route as it limits the use of the truck as it would be my daily driver when not towing. So I need to shrink my 5th Wheeler requirement to accommodate. I intend on purchasing a turbo diesel truck and am leaning on the Chevy 3500HD double cab. I looking for my best option in a 5th wheeler to tow with it or equivalent. What size rig and weight of an RV should I be looking for and assured of being safe and confident? Would I be better off looking at TT's instead? Thanks all and be safe out there.

Well $125K is close if you are looking to buy new. If you start looking at used trucks, keep in mind until the last couple model years Ford and GM SRW 350/3500's lacked big payloads both were about 3,300#. Only Ram had the big 12,300# GVWR with 4,200#=/- payloads in a SRW, Ram made the move in 2013.

We tow a 5er at 13,000# with a 2016 Ram 3500 DRW, looking to go to a larger 5er in the future. As I stated before when looking at Payload numbers that DOESN'T all go to pin weight, it includes everything added to the TV over full fuel and DEF tanks, and a 150# driver. Last time I weighed 150# was about 30 years ago. As I stated before we lost 1,400# of payload to us, hitch, and stuff. Our 13,000# 5er has a pin of 2,700#, if we had lost that 1,400# from a 4,200# payload, we would only have 2,800# left for pin weight.

We are full timers, and our Ram is our only vehicle, there are not too many places I will not take it, most are tight turn drive thru.