Forum Discussion

DazedNConfused's avatar
Mar 21, 2014

Time to simplify -- fiver to TT. Do I need WD?

Currently have a 40ft 5th wheel that we put a fully season of camping into. Our first big trailer...and it helped us figure out the NEED to haves vs. the NICE to haves. Example...bath and a half is NICE..but we only NEED one bath. Dedicated bunkhouse for my kids is NICE, but they really only NEED a place to sleep. Tons of inside storage is NICE, but we find we're packing rolls of paper towels and such around our stuff so it doesn't move around while travelling (unit has a monster pantry!) because we don't fill it up.

I'm also tired of washing/cleaning 40ft of camper, having difficulty getting in and out of some tighter campsites, and having to deal with 5 storage tanks and three slides. Great if we're staying put for a while...but we are weekend warriors and do 4-day trips.

So I'm looking to downsize to an under 30' TT. I'd prefer 26' or less, bunks for the kids, and have taken a liking to units like the Rockwood Mini 2504s with a murphy bed that gives us a couch during the day, single slide, 26', etc. Plenty for the 4 day trips we do. Will miss the outside kitchen...but oh well.

I'm trying to figure out what is reasonable for my truck. It's 2012 F-250 diesel which is more than up for the task of any TT we're looking at, of course. Something would further simplify things further would be the novelty of not having to deal with a weight distributing hitch. My tow bar is of the beefy 2.5" variety. Any rules of thumb out there on how much I can realistically load on the back of the truck without WD? The novelty of dropping on the ball of the truck and using a drill to bring up the manual stabilizer jacks should take all of a few minutes and would be nice.

Dry hitch weight on the 2504S is 480lbs. So maybe I'll be around 600 when we're loaded up? GVWR of that trailer is 6,200 lbs, but based on the results from weighing my current setup, we won't use all of the payload capacity available in teh camper -- so expect to land around 5,500 - 5,750 lbs -- half the weight we town now with the fiver.

So what are the rules of thumb for towing with and without WD? Truck already has airbags, btw.

Thanks in advance.