Jerigorn
Junior Member
To start, my apologies if this question has been asked before, but I could not find anything on it. This summer I'm moving to Tampa (military). I am keeping my wife and son in North Carolina in our house, and the plan is for me to live in a travel trailer for at least a year, until they move down with me.
I'm going to buy the travel trailer local to the Tampa area since their have a much larger market, and so I don't have to drag it 10 hours. Digging into what I can tow, there are a few trailers I'm interested in that might slightly exceed my trucks limitations. Specs below:
2009 1500 4x4 5.7 3.55
Has Bilstein 5100 set at 2.5", which eliminates factory rake
Trailor brake controller and factory size tires
**Pulled these specs from 2010 as there's no change to hardware**
Max towing - 8400 lbs
Max payload - 1380 lbs
GCWR - 14,000 lbs
I bought bags of gravel for a landscaping project once, and didn't think they weighed as much as they did. Just the gravel was 2300lbs (after calculating), plus the weight of my wife, son, and me in the truck set the total to 2700 lbs, almost double the capacity. Thankfully I only had a 3 mile drive home.
I plan on adding the AirLift 1000 kit to help with the sag and counter the front lift. I'll also purchase a weight distribution hitch.
Digging into travel trailers there's obviously two different weights - Dry vs GVWR. As I'm looking at the used market, then it's anyone's guess on the actual weight since they've made modifications and swapped out furniture / appliances.
To sum up this long rant, do you think I would be fine pulling a trailer say 9000-9500 given these specs and future modifications? I'm looking at pulling 50 miles max and parking the thing for months. From there I would either sell the trailer or get a bigger truck.
Some say writing is therapeutic and promotes thought. I just had a though now that I typed all of this out, lol. Local truck rental (i.e. F-250s from Home Depot or moving company, either should be cheap). I guess if I go that route, then a hurricane would require me to move it with my ram.
I'm going to buy the travel trailer local to the Tampa area since their have a much larger market, and so I don't have to drag it 10 hours. Digging into what I can tow, there are a few trailers I'm interested in that might slightly exceed my trucks limitations. Specs below:
2009 1500 4x4 5.7 3.55
Has Bilstein 5100 set at 2.5", which eliminates factory rake
Trailor brake controller and factory size tires
**Pulled these specs from 2010 as there's no change to hardware**
Max towing - 8400 lbs
Max payload - 1380 lbs
GCWR - 14,000 lbs
I bought bags of gravel for a landscaping project once, and didn't think they weighed as much as they did. Just the gravel was 2300lbs (after calculating), plus the weight of my wife, son, and me in the truck set the total to 2700 lbs, almost double the capacity. Thankfully I only had a 3 mile drive home.
I plan on adding the AirLift 1000 kit to help with the sag and counter the front lift. I'll also purchase a weight distribution hitch.
Digging into travel trailers there's obviously two different weights - Dry vs GVWR. As I'm looking at the used market, then it's anyone's guess on the actual weight since they've made modifications and swapped out furniture / appliances.
To sum up this long rant, do you think I would be fine pulling a trailer say 9000-9500 given these specs and future modifications? I'm looking at pulling 50 miles max and parking the thing for months. From there I would either sell the trailer or get a bigger truck.
Some say writing is therapeutic and promotes thought. I just had a though now that I typed all of this out, lol. Local truck rental (i.e. F-250s from Home Depot or moving company, either should be cheap). I guess if I go that route, then a hurricane would require me to move it with my ram.