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Truck weight ratings?
Hi Folks, newbie here - have been travel trailer owner for years, and looking to move up to a 5th wheel.
Current truck is a 2005 Chevy Silverado 2500HD with the 6.6L Duramax and Allison tranny, crew cab long-bed. This rig pulls our 2010 Arctic Fox 27T (29 ft end-to-end) like a dream, figure it was all the truck I would need. But now looking at numbers on the 5-ers we're interested in not so sure... So looking for advice from the experienced members here. Here go some numbers:
Current truck ratings
GVWR: 9200
GAWR front 4800 / rear 6084
GCWR: 22,000
Actual truck weights:
Total 7450
Front 4400 / rear 3050
Tire sidewall rating: 3415 each (so 6830 total)
Truck manual says max trailer 12,000; VIN decoder on Chevy truck forum shows 5th wheel max of 13,400
We really like our Arctic Fox TT (quality, features), and the AF 5th wheel model we're most interested in (model 32-5M) shows a dry wt of 12,030 and GVWR of 16,500. Wow - not sure how it is that heavy! And numbers look too big for our truck.
Another 5-er we're looking at (Heartland Sundance 3280RES) lists gross dry at 10,740 and GVWR of 13,800. Looks closer but still too much?
Doing the math on our truck GVWR and actual total weight leaves only 1750 available. If I take 20% of Sundance weight (using mid-point between dry wt and GVWR) gives an estimated hitch weight of 2454... Hmm
In general, what factors go into truck trailer weight ratings? I notice that newer models than our 2005 have much higher numbers. Are they building the trucks beefier? Or just cutting margins on specs to compete against the other brands?
Thanks for any help you can provide!
Cheers
Rick from Oregon
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