Thinking about towing a 5th wheel camper? You're going to need a truck, and some pickups are better for the job than others. Here's what to look for.

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00:00 - Intro
00:24 - Truck Bed Length
02:49 - Weight Ratings
04:11 - Gas vs Diesel
05:26 - SRW vs DRW
05:58 - Factory 5th Wheel Prep Packages

What's up, guys, Jake here with etrailer.com. Today we're gonna go over five things to consider when thinking about towing a fifth wheel with a truck. Some of those things are gonna be whether it's a long bed or a short bed, different types of payloads that different vehicles have, gas versus diesel and a few other things you might need to know. The first thing we're gonna talk about is the length of your bed. Here we have three different lengths of beds. We have a short, a regular and a long bed with us.

The difference in these lengths are gonna mean a couple of different things. The longer your bed is, means the further your axle is going to be back from the engine, and this is going to cause you to have more leverage to be able to tow a load a lot better. Usually what it means is it's going to increase your towing capacity and your payload capacity, but all that is going to depend on what year make and model that you specifically have. The other thing that your bed length will determine is what type of fifth wheel hitch you're going to be able to use. So, with our short bed, this is five and a half foot long.

We are going to have to use a standard fifth wheel hitch with the re-side liner, which is going to be a kingpin that mounts to the camper itself and will pivot at the camper, and not on the fifth wheel head itself. You just have to use those because of the limited cab clearance. With our standard bed, we can use a standard hitch with a standard kingpin, if our camper matches up, maybe if we have an older camper, which whose nose doesn't stick out so far forward, we might be able to get by with the standard of both options. You can use a sliding hitch, which is usually what we recommend, or you can use that standard fifth wheel hitch with the side liner combo that we just referred to for the short bed. With the long bed, it's gonna be the easiest because you can get by with just a standard kingpin and a standard fifth wheel hitch.

Now, one general rule of thumb that we've heard from many different people is that you buy your truck to fit your camper, not your camper to fit your truck. And the reason why people say this is because if you end up buying a camper to match your truck, you're gonna end up settling for something that you maybe don't like as much as another camper. Now, this is all saying that you can afford to buy a new truck and a new camper. If you just so happen to have a truck that can haul a bunch, then your market is going to be much broader for the different fifth wheels that you can afford. We're talking about weight ratings.

You want to consider the Gross Vehicle Weight Rating, which is going to be the weight of the vehicle itself, plus the payload included. The payload of your vehicle is going to be the passengers and the driver, and all of the contents inside of the vehicle, plus the pin weight, since we're talking about a fifth wheel camper. The Gross Combined Weight Rating is going to be the vehicle, the contents inside, and the weight of the trailer. Both of these numbers, the Gross Vehicle Weight Rating and Gross Combined Weight Rating can usually be found on the inside of your driver door displayed with the acronyms subscribing both. So, in the case of F-150 here, the Gross Vehicle Weight Rating is 7,100 pounds. The Gross Combined Weight rating is 15,000 pounds. So essentially. our trailer can weigh no more than 7,900 pounds to get that 15,000 pound total. Now, if you don't want to do all that math to figure out what your GVWR, your GCWR, and your payload is, you can find all information in the owner's manual of your vehicle. This will also tell you what towing capacity your vehicle has, based off of the motor and drive train that came with your vehicle. The next topic is going to be gas versus diesel. The biggest difference is going to be your torque. Diesel's always going to have a lot more torque than a stock gas motor. And this comes in handy when you're hauling heavier campers. So, when you get up into your fifth wheels, usually we recommend looking into, seriously looking into buying a diesel truck if you're above that 10,000 pound GVWR rating for your camper. So, this is my 2,500, it has a gas motor in, and my trailer weighs exactly 10,000 pounds.

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