The dealers do not have crystal balls.

[rbpru]

After reading some of these posts, I find it amazing that people expect the dealers to know what they are going to haul.

The car dealer looked at my F-150 E-boost 4x4 and said the spec. sheet say it will tow 9500 lbs. He has no idea what the max cargo is on any particular truck is, he can guess it will be between 1200 and 1600 lbs. So as far as he knows a 9500 lb. TT with 1150 lbs. of tongue weight is within spec.

What he does not know is I haul a truck cap, dog, canoe etc. or about 600 lbs. plus of stuff in my TV before I add the tongue weight. If I mention that to the dealer they will be glad to sell be an F-250.:W

Likewise the TT dealer. Let’s say, you want a particular trailer, the dealer looks at the spec sheet and gives you the dry weight. He might suggest you will have about 1000 lbs. of gear.

In reality he has seen dozens of happy campers plop a 7000 lb. dry weight TT on the back of a half-ton pick-up and go blissfully on their way. Again the dealer has no way of knowing how much or how balanced your load will be.

The dealer’s job is to show and sell you the product you want. He assumes you know or have a reasonable knowledge of your desired purchase and is not going to grill you with a bunch of questions.

As always it is up to the buyer to understand how he is going to use what he buys. Unfortunately the new comer often lacks the knowledge of all the variable involved in selecting a good TT and TV combination.

[sunofabeach]

I've had my truck and trailer at the CAT scales as well and I have 600lbs of payload left after tongue weight and being loaded for camping. I would say that is plenty of headroom for any of the weight police.

[RavensFan24]

sunofabeach wrote:
my F150 tows my 7200lbs loaded trailer perfectly fine. no white knuckles, no tail wagging the dog. would it tow better with a 1 ton? probably. but it would cost me an additional $20k for the 1 ton diesel not including the higher maintenance cost.

Same here. I put about 25k miles on my 02 Tahoe while towing our old 26' trailer all over the country with no issues. Traded in the old Tahoe at 185k miles for a '10 Tahoe at the same time we upgraded to a 30' trailer. Both trailers weigh the same since the new one is an Ultra Light. The only time I get any sway is in high winds, but other than that I'm perfectly comfortable while driving and so is my girlfriend. I've been considering upgrading to the Suburban 2500, but I'm not too pressed since it hasn't been a problem over the last 8 years of towing.

Yes, we're pushing the limits of the weight ratings, but we're not over any limits (I just took it to the scales) and the ride is comfortable.

I'm heading to MD from FL tomorrow. I'll let you know if my opinion changes on the drive. 🙂

[sunofabeach]

my F150 tows my 7200lbs loaded trailer perfectly fine. no white knuckles, no tail wagging the dog. would it tow better with a 1 ton? probably. but it would cost me an additional $20k for the 1 ton diesel not including the higher maintenance cost.

[mike77leprechau]

Samsonsworld wrote:
The way some of you talk, I'm surprised I don't see half tons in the ditch all the time. Lot of them out there towing. I think they're more capable than some on here want to give them credit for. Think I have have a couple thousand miles towing my 8k lb (dry) trailer behind mine. It's been solid.

Would a 3/4 diesel be better? Sure. But I like having a newer more dependable vehicle and my half ton was about $15-20k cheaper. Each to their own I guess.

agreed.

[Samsonsworld]

mike77leprechaun wrote:
the wives don't like the floorplans

You got that right.

[mike77leprechau]

I've heard and withnessed the opposite. the TV is disclosed, the dealer shows the ultra lites and the wives don't like the floorplans, the husbands dont like the prices so they end up with a heavy but cheaper stick and tin.

my salesman will read you the specs but then we discuss weight distribution, hitch weight, etc. and he even encourages test tows. my new trailer weighs 900 lbs more than my old one however it tows much better and thats all that matters.

[rbpru]

I am sure that many of those who complain that “The TV dealer should have told me my truck was too small”, are the same people who would have walk out of the dealership complaining that “The greedy salesman was just trying to sell me a bigger truck.”:E

When picking your TV and TT combination it is up to you to determine how much junk you consider necessary for your RV style, how soft or rough a ride you can tolerate, can I afford the up keep on that gonzo TV or TT? How much over the specs are you willing to tolerate?

The dealer cannot answer these questions for you. :S

I fully understand that such answers usually come from experience but that does not help the new comer.

[Samsonsworld]

The way some of you talk, I'm surprised I don't see half tons in the ditch all the time. Lot of them out there towing. I think they're more capable than some on here want to give them credit for. Think I have have a couple thousand miles towing my 8k lb (dry) trailer behind mine. It's been solid.

Would a 3/4 diesel be better? Sure. But I like having a newer more dependable vehicle and my half ton was about $15-20k cheaper. Each to their own I guess.

[hohenwald48]

If you look at the title of this thread you gotta' wonder just what kind they do have. 🙂

[BubbaChris]

My truck salesman pretty much ran into his limits immediately after offering a test drive. He was the son of another long-time sales manager at the dealership and didn't last a year. I wasn't surprised after reading his nasty comments he emailed me after I had to strong-arm them into replacing the 7-pin connector because the cover was broken off when I bought it.

I suspect one of the issues we run into is that TT usage is a very, very small part of the market. Our demands on the vehicles are unique compared to 90% of their sales. This challenges both the manufacturers and the sales guys.

Now that I'm in that minority, I take more careful note of all the people around here who use their trucks for work. Nearly all of them are 3/4 and 1-ton models, many pulling cargo trailers. Before I started coming here, I would have thought they were doing it (avoiding 1/2 tons) for their ego. Now I know better.

[Doug33]

My experience with car salespeople (and sometimes RV salespeople), is that they are salespeople first, and often don't have intimate knowledge of their products. When they don't make their sales quotas, they bounce from dealer to dealer, industry to industry. Whether it be cars, RVs, or appliances, 9 times out of 10 I know a lot more about the product I'm buying than the salesperson.

A few months ago I was test driving a used car for my daughter and got pulled over by local cop because the dealer license plate was on the front dash instead of the rear of the vehicle. Fortunately the cop didn't give me a ticket, but told me to tell the salesperson about the plate. When I told the salesperson the plate needed to be seen from the rear, he said "Really? I never knew that!"

The time before that, the car salesperson said they had only been at the dealer a few months, and before that they sold insurance.

I got real fortunate two years ago when I bought my TT. The salesperson owned the same exact model I was buying, and knew exactly what TV was needed to tow it.

[Community Alumni]

I got to agree with you that the manufacturers bare some of the blame. The commercial will show "Best In Class" tow ratings, but the truck on the screen is some Platinum or Laramie Limited. Turns out that the actual truck that hits that number probably needs to be special ordered and won't have nearly as many doodads as the one on TV. There's still a ton of clueless people out there and the endless wave will continue until actual tow capacities become more visible. Just as visible as the MPG number on 1/2 tons. All of us here know about the calculations, but most don't when they enter the world of towing. There's still lots of people out there that believe commercials, published numbers, salespeople, Youtube, their buddy, etc.

[itguy08]

I think part of the blame lies with the truck makers. They advertise these huge tow #s for all their trucks. And yes you an buy that and tow that with the appropriate package.

The problem is determining what packages you have or need to have to get those #s. They seem to be purposefully obfuscated. And every truck looks like every other truck.

Take the F150 for example. It has tow ratings form 5k to 13k. They all look alike and it gets very hard to figure out what the rating exactly is. Sure you can "back into it" with the payload and GVWR ratings but those are best guesses at best without the actual window sticker. Some make that easy, some make that hard. For Ford you can generate them on line and see just what it was built with.

I'm thinking there should be some more notations on the payload sticker detailing tow capacity. That would give the consumer easy access to the tow ratings and would make it less confusing to everyone.

[seaeagle2]

chr$ wrote:

seaeagle2 wrote:
When I bought my used F150, I was towing a 18 foot boat, and not intending to tow a TT (I didn't have a crystal ball either). Turns out, my truck doesn't have the tow package so it has a 5000 lb tow capacity. After posting a question on this website and having someone post a link to a trailer that would fit our needs, (under 5000 lbs with an oven, a Chalet Takena 1860 or 1860BH), we started looking to see if something else more readily available would fit the bill. Knowing the 5000 lb limit of our truck, the first thing we would tell the salesman was that our truck would tow 5000 lbs. The responses we got varied from "You need to buy a new truck before you can buy a trailer", to "Ahh, you're good for 7500 easy", "Those ratings have some fudge factor built in". Of 7 different salespeople at different dealers, 2 did actually listen and, say "well, lets look at what we've got that you can tow". So while I agree on the customer doing due diligence to know what they can tow, the average salesman, at least in my experience, doesn't really care......

It's interesting that your 2010 F150 4.6 3V is only rated for 5,000#. My 2009 Explorer Sport Trac 4.6 3V is rated for 6,900#. Must have something to do with overall weight of both rigs? The Sport Trac weighs in around 4,500#.

Its a little footnote buried at the beginning of the towing section, "If you vehicle is not equipted with a tow package, your vehicle is limited to 5000lbs towing capacity". If you don't see that the other note that's easy to miss is the one that notes that the tow capacities listed in the chart are for the max tow package, not the regular tow package. My truck was a Canadian market XLT so even though its an XLT it doesn't have the in bumper fog lights and has a note on the door sticker "not for sale in USA".... I guess once it's used, that doesn't matter, it was built at Dearborn.