What are my TC options for towing?

Kayteg1 wrote:

Blk88GT wrote:
My front axle rating is 5600lbs and my rear axle rating is 7000lbs.

And again, it would be good to know your actual weight with trailer.
Rough estimate the truck pust 3000lb on rear axle empty.
The 8000 lb trailer puts 1200 lb on the ball and 2200 lb on rear axle.
Leaving you roughly 1800lb for camper and other rear load.
Now you can see why so many advises talk about dually.

Exactly. There's a number of ways to calculate it, but what it comes down to is not enough GVWR for the load. The scary thing about doing this with a SRW 1 ton in this circumstance is that not only will the truck itself be grossly overloaded, the two rear tires on the truck itself are likely going to be overloaded as well, which is flirting with disaster. Pickup truck tires, LT rated or not, will not last long overloaded, even a little bit. Two of mine failed in the last year, they weren't even 5 years old, and they were never overloaded or underinflated.

Like I said before, you need a dually. People will sit and try to argue with me about "law" and honestly, I don't find that discussion all that interesting even though I am a lawyer. If you drive a vehicle that is dangerously overloaded, you may find yourself in prison if you lose control of it and hurt or kill someone. If that possibility isn't enough to convince you that overloading a vehicle is a bad idea, then no discussion about whatever kind of traffic ticket you could get in some state for being overloaded is going to matter. I'm not trying to moralize that discussion, either; all of adult life is trade offs. But you need to know what your truck is rated for and how your use fits either within, or not, to those ratings. For a SRW 1 ton, it's GVWR that matters above all else.

Ultimately, these capacity discussions should really be thought of as engineering questions. Are trucks capable of being overloaded? The answer to that question is unquestionably yes. All things are engineered with a safety factor built in.

Trucks are designed for their rated load. They likely have enough power and brakes to handle way more than their rated load. The problem becomes that the tires, wheels, springs, and other little parts are all selected for the rated capacity. Hypothetically, sure, if you had stiffer springs, dual wheels or better tires, and each of those little parts were carefully selected, an engineer might say that the whole assembly was safe. But the reality is that it is much easier to buy a truck that is made to do what you're trying to do with it rather than try to become your own automotive engineer and figure out all the little considerations that the OEs go to great length to make sure are safe. Trucks are designed as a matched set of parts. A dually doesn't just attach two more tires and a door sticker.

Commercial motor vehicles are made to carry quite a bit, usually much more than most of their applications call for. Cars built for the general public are made to a specific price and capacity point and expected to be used like that. A SRW 1 ton can generally pull any bumper pull trailer with the right WD hitch. With a 5th wheel or gooseneck, or in your case, with a 3,000+ lb truck camper in the bed, it's not hard to overload the truck at all. And like I said, since generally the RAWR of a SRW 1 ton is based on the rear tire capacity, you're flirting with disaster.

If you do not care about anything else I've typed into this little box, DON'T overload your rear tires. That will not end well.

You need a dually.