[DutchmenSport]

Wow! I looked up your model of trailer on the Internet, several dealerships, and the average price is around $187,000, with monthly payments around $1200 a month. But, that IS one really, really nice looking trailer!

That trailer is also 8 feet 5 inches wide and fully loaded (with water and everything), you will definitely be in the 20,000 pound range. Simply put, a trailer of that size being pulled by a single wheeled axle truck will be a sorrowful experience. The tail will definitely be wagging the dog. The shear weight of the trailer itself will cause this.... even if the truck stats say it can haul or pull such weight, the shear size of the thing will shove and push the truck and cause it to feel weird all the time. Ad your toys in the trailer garage and you are reducing some of the tongue weight and that will affect the weight in the bed of the truck. That will also cause some weird and unwanted driving behavior with a truck that light (compared to what it's pulling).

One thing you ABSOLUTELY need to have is 100% control of are the brakes. Can the truck ... by itself ... STOP the entire rig if the brakes on the trailer go out suddenly. The answer is, NO. A single wheeled axle will NOT have enough braking power or traction on the road to keep things under good control..... And yes, you can expect the trailer brakes to fail sometime in the life of your RVing experience. It happens to all of us at one time or another for multiple reasons, and every one of them seems to be something different. But it does happen.

The shear size of the trailer (40 feet long, 8 feet 5 inches wide) over 20,000 pounds loaded might even be in MTD territory.

I strongly suggest you consider a beefier truck if you want a safe and comfortable tow experience.

If you are planning on retiring, I also strongly suggest you go into retirement with absolutely no debt. Otherwise, your retirement investment will go to paying interest on those loans. And you have to make sure you have enough capital to make those monthly payments. Get out of debt before retiring and you can live on a lot, lot, lot less. (I know, I did this myself). When I turned 62.5, I cashed out my 401k with no penalties, and then continued working for another 4 years and (almost) recovered all my 401K by putting in about 45% of my salary since I had no more debt to pay. That also helped us adjust to living on a LOT less much sooner, so when I retired, the ... much, much, much less income capital equalized what we were already living on. Except now, I didn't have to drive to an office very day. Instead, we drive all over the country camping!

Next, read some of the other RV forums that RV Lie sponsors. Check out the Montana Owners Club forum, the Keystone Forum, IRV2 forum, RV FORUM and read through the many, many, many posts about what people have experienced with towing trailers of all sorts. I think you'll get a pretty good picture, pretty fast.

Go to the RV life Pro link on this page (very upper left corner of this page, click on RV Life Pro). Scroll down to the "Communities" section and click on the "learn more" link. A pop-up page will return with all the different forum sites RV Life sponsors. There's nothing wrong with reading any of them, pick any brand subject and go to the towing forum sections and start reading. I think you will learn a lot this way.

Good luck. I hope everything works well for you. That is sure one dandy nice look camper!