Tow Advice Needed

[John815617]

The bad news is my 1997 f250 has moved on to a better place. Good news is the better half allowed me to replace it with a 2014 f350 diesel. Of course now we are looking at a new trailer. We have an Artic Fox 27T GVWR 10400 and loved it. Now for the retirement up grade we are looking at the Artic Fox 35-5z. My question is about the weight. New Ford is rated for 16100 max trailer weight fifth wheel towing. The new trailer is 16300 GVWR. Is this acceptable assuming I do not overload? Should I have gone with DRW for this size trailer? Any advice or experience from 5th wheel pullers appreciated.

[carringb]

Arctic Fox trailers are very overbuilt. You probably will not end up loading the trailer to its GVWR. Pin weights tend to be reasonable too.

[kzspree320]

I think you should look at the label of the fiver for the empty weight also. It could be that it is about 12K and has about 4K in cargo capacity. My fiver weighs 10,600 lbs empty and 12,000 ready for camping. It has a 14,000 GVWR, but it will never be that heavy. That's just not what we do, but I know a lot of people load them down.

I think it's certainly wrong to plan using the empty weight, but you can also cost yourself a lot of money just automatically using the GVWR if you never load it that heavy (especially given some fivers have 4-5,000 lbs of cargo capacity). If you know you'll fill it up heavy, use the GVWR. If you know you'll put the same amount of stuff you have in yours now, then how much does your stuff weigh? If you load about half the cargo capacity, then your SRW may do fine. If you are going all the way to GVWR, then I see a dually in your future. Hope this helps. Good luck.

[kennethwooster]

I just went from SRW to DRW as we plan on buying longer in a couple of years. We've driven in cities and all over with the DRW and find it is very easy to park and get around in So far I've only pulled about 200 miles but was very impressed. I also went with the F350 except dRW, and made sure it had all the options for more pin weight and tow rate It also came with the hitch prep package. Went with the B&W puck system. I love the hitch. good luck with your new purchase. You will love the truck It will do a good job, just don't go overboard. I have and regretted.

[45Ricochet]

Congrats on the new F350 :B
You need to look at the driver side door pillar for GVWR and RAWR. You'll pull about anything fine, it's how much you can carry that counts. IIRC your new F350 should have about a 4k lb amount of payload available, but they differ somewhat with the amount of options etc.
Just a guess here but you should be good to about 3k lbs of pin after you install the hitch, load up the bed for camping and a full amount of passengers.

[Golden_HVAC]

Hi,

The trailer weight limit is 16,100 pounds. That is for a F-350 with only a couple of options, and only 1 driver (154 pounds) then the GCVWR is taken, minus the truck curb weight minus 154 pound driver, and you end up with GCWR of 16,100 pounds. Add to that a driver of say 350 ponuds or co-driver around 135 pounds and you can exceed the factory assumed curb weight of the truck.

So your actual tow limit might be 15,900 pounds if your curb weight is 200 pounds more than the test truck weight at the Ford factory while printing the brochure at Ford.

Still a trailer with a 16,300 pound GVWR probably has a curb weight around 14,XXX while the tanks are dry, and nothing inside. Just as long as you are not adding more than the recommended weight, you will be fine.

And you will have Perm-A-Grin from that new truck pulling power!

Fred.

[therink]

One a one ton SRW, you will run out of gvwr or gawr on the truck long before you run out of weight you can pull. Keep in mind that a fiver with 16k gvwr will have a 20 to 25 percent pin weight. That will be your limiting factor. The best thing to do if read the sticker on your new truck and determine what the available cargo capacity is from the factory, then deduct how ever many pounds the hitch, cargo, passengers, pets, etc weigh and the difference is a safe way to determine what you have left for pin weight.

[fla-gypsy]

If you do not exceed ANY weight ratings it should be acceptable. Make sure you understand and check all of them.