We’ve been RVing for 16 years. Started with a pop up, traded up to a 33’ fifth wheel bunkhouse after three months (we were going every other weekend locally, since we were enjoying it so much), traded up ten years later to a 41’ five slides fifth wheel and sold it when we realized bigger was NOT better! We had that behemoth for four years. Then we took a break of a year and a half. When we jumped back into RVing we bought a 26’ TT in June, traded it for a 30’ fifth wheel in January, and traded that in for a 33’ fifth wheel in March. In the meantime we’ve been through four different tow vehicles. So you can say we’ve made some very bad financial decisions, especially in the last year when we should have known better!
The thing with us is we prefer the stability of fifth wheel towing, the relative ease of fifth wheel hitching, and the spaciousness of fifth wheels. You get more space per overall length with fifth wheels (TT hitch about 4’ behind the tow vehicle’s bumper, fifth wheels hitch in the bed of the truck.)
there’s a lot of good advice here to check the gross vehicle weight rating of the unit (unloaded weight + cargo carrying capacity) but one thing many people don’t know and RV dealers won’t tell you is to make sure your truck can handle the hitch weight. Tow weight is how much weight your vehicle can pull behind it. Hitch weight is how much weight your truck can handle pushing DOWN on the back of the truck. If you don’t consider this, you set yourself up for blowouts on your truck’s rear tires, as well as other nasty consequences. Every truck should have a cargo carrying capacity listed on a sticker, usually in the driver’s door frame. The hitch weight of your trailer— whether pull behind or fifth wheel— needs to be added to your calculation of how much your truck is carrying. This is why we had to trade in our Ford F-150 when we bought the fifth wheel in January... It was more than light enough for the F150 to pull behind, but the hitch weight of the fifth wheel, combined with the weight of the actual hitch plus DH, two dogs, myself and a few other items we carry in the truck put us over the truck’s cargo carrying capacity by about 300 Lbs.
We ended trading that fifth wheel in March because the manufacturer intended it to be pulled by the lower F-150/1500 pickup trucks (even though they can’t due to hitch weight), and it hitched high (angled high where it hitched, nearly dragging on the ground in the rear. It was what’s known as a “mid-profile” fifth wheel. Our current fifth wheel is “full-profile”. Here’s our current rig in the picture below. By the way, many if not most full-profile fifth wheels have king size bed options. Good luck!
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