Tod osier
WKR
- Joined
- Sep 11, 2015
This brings up something that I have thought a lot about driving around Colorado this summer seeing hundreds of trailers being towed with not even 1/2 tons, but small trucks and midsized SUV’s. My wife’s suv has a tow hitch on it and wouldnt dream of hooking anything up to that unless it’s maybe a drift boat or a utility trailer, never a 21’ or any RV trailer!
I drive an f150 and do have a RV trailer that I tow it with, but I feel like it’s welllll within the acceptable weight and size of what a 1/2 should be towing. It’s a 18’ trailer that weights 3,200 pounds dry, I’m sure fully loaded in at 4,000 or so. My f150 with the max tow and the 3.5 eco boost, Ford gives it a tow rating if I think 12k pounds, so I know people out there buy a truck like mine then buy these long and heavy 8-9k trailers thinking they are well within spec, so they’re fine.
Back to my question and thought....What do you guys feel the Acceptable % of your tow rating to be used on a dry trailer weight is? IE...if you have a 10k tow rating, should you never go over 50%? 35%? Or is it higher? I feel like some standardized “dry weight percent of tow capacity” rating would help people understand that it’s not just pulling, but stopping, and controlling the load that’s the much more important part. Especially all the new uninformed folks out today trying to recreate outside.
For me for a 1/2 ton, I like 1/2 capacity max as a starting point. A big issue is that a lot of people don't actually look at all the things they can exceed. On a half ton, it is easy to be within the tow rating, but exceed the payload capacity of the truck. Tow a 5K trailer with a 10K truck tow rating, sounds like now biggie, but that 5K trailer has at least a 500 pound tongue weight. Add a topper to the truck, passengers and gear in the bed and you easily exceed the payload and the rear axle rating.