Pulling a 5th Wheel Trailer

Has anybody pulled a 5th wheel camper with the Ram 1500 3.0 ecodiesel with the 6'4" bed?

The previous owner of mine had a 5th wheel hitch installed so just curious how it pulled and handles the tongue weight.

What is the weight of the trailer? What is the tongue weight?

While on paper it may look like a 1500 can "pull" x amount of weight you really need to consider how stable it will be and can you stop it. No way I would tow a 5th wheel with a 1/2 ton truck but that's just me.


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Yeah that's always been my opinion too. I don't have a 5th wheel nor am I considering pulling one. Mainly just curious of other's experiences with it. I've seen a lot of guys pull one with a 1500 and always wondered.

Technically a fifth wheel doesn't apply tongue weight as the pin is located slightly forward of the rear axle. Tongue weight is any weight applied behind the rear axle.
Fivers and goosenecks inherently tow better that a bumper pull as the pivot point is the rear axle and the weight distribution to the front axle. Bumper pull trailers use the rear axle as a fulcrum of leverage to push the front of the vehicle around (up/down and side to side). That why using a WDH and how you load the trailer is important with a bumper pull.
Several trailer manufacturers make 1/2 ton truck weight friendly fifth wheel trailers. The brakes on an EcoDiesel are the same as on the Hemi which has upwards of a 10K lbs tow rating, between the trailer brakes and the truck brakes there is enough there to to stop that much. Keep in mind at 10K lbs of trailer you've added about 150% of total weight your trying to stop, distance to stop gets a whole lot longer.

crash68 said:

Keep in mind at 10K lbs of trailer you've added about 150% of total weight your trying to stop, distance to stop gets a whole lot longer.

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Been there done that, loaded a 24' trailer to get our yard stuff moved, blew the stop sign up our road at 20 MPH because I could not stop the trailer without the trailer brakes (wiring is out to axles) but I safely made it 10 miles to our new house keeping it slower than posted limits.