uzikaduzi

a lot of campers aren't small like they used to be... go check out some bumper pulls, or get a bigger truck, or ride significantly overloaded completely your choice

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I tow a fifth wheel but I use a F-250 Sper Duty diesel to do it. You need to be careful when towing somewhat heavy items. While the weight may fall within the specifications of the truck that doesn't mean you can safely tow the weight. Fifth wheels have a big profile and when you hit strong crosswinds the trailer can end up controlling the truck and that gets really spooky really fast. Also, there is a big difference between pulling on flat ground and pulling over hills.

For me, pulling a fifth wheel requires at least an F-250 with a diesel engine. Feel free to disagree, but I've towed a fifth wheel all over the nation and I wouldn't want to do it with anything smaller.

smokeywren

Shop more for a TT. Look for one with minimum height of 11'. With 7' inside height, that leaves about 4' for undercarriage and stuff on the roof - such as the AC unit. Or look at the Keystone Cougar X-Lite that is 11'4' high. I'll bet the interior height is closer to 7'. However, Keystone does not include the interior height in their specs, so you'll just have to go stand in one to find out.

I did see that Skyline TTs all have interior height of 78", so maybe that's an industry standard? If so, then maybe a 5er is for you. But not just any 5er. 5ers come in three "profiles", low, medium and high profile. My medium-profile 5er has less than 6' floor-to-ceiling in the bedroom, and about 78" in the living room. A high-profile 5er is more than 13' tall so it drags a lot of wind, but has about 7' ceiling in the bedroom. However, you cannot tow a high-profile 5r with an F-150 without being overloaded. So a truck trade is in your future.

No. Ford's tow ratings for conventional trailers (read bumper pull trailers) are often less than for fifth wheel trailers only because of the weight limits of the receiver. Example: 2009 F-350 DRW diesel has max conventional trailer weight of 15,000 pounds, regardless of cab or axle ratio - because the stock receiver hitch for that truck has weight rating of 15,000 pounds. But same exact truck has 5er tow ratings of 15,200 to 16,300, depending on cab and axle ratio. Of course they assume that you bought a 5er hitch with as least as much weight capacity as your max trailer weight.

2009 F-250 and F-350 SRW diesel has convention trailer tow rating of 12,500 pounds, because the receiver in those trucks is rated for a max of 12,500 pounds trailer weight. But the same truck has 5er tow ratings of 15,300 to 16,300 because Ford assumes your hitch weight limit won't be the limiter - so the tow rating is based on GCWR, and assumes you won't exceed the GVWR of the tow vehicle.

Assuming a 5er hitch rated for at least 1500 pounds hitch weight, then you'll never get close to a 1500 pounds hitch weight without exceeding the GVWR of an F-150. But you might get close to the 1,050 pounds max hitch weight of the stock F-150 receiver if your F-150 has the max tow package.

I have a 25' Keystone Sprinter fifth wheel RV with one big slide that grosses about 8,000 pounds when wet and loaded for the road. Darling Daughter was full-timing in it, then wanted to bring it home. So I recently towed it back from Austin with my F-150, and here were the weights:

Front axle = 3,300 = not close to fGAWR of 3,750
Rear axle = 4,600 = severely overloaded over rGAWR of 3,850
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GVW 7,900 would exceed the GVWR of an F-150 with max tow package, so it required the HD Payload package with GVWR of 8,200 to tow with an F-150 without being overloaded over the GVWR of the F-150. My F-150 4x2 doesn't even have the max tow pkg, so GVWR is only 7,100.

Trailer axles = 6,800 compared to combined trailer GAWR of 7,000 pounds and combined tire weight capacity over 10,000 pounds. 6,800 pounds trailer axle weight is just about spot-on for that 5er. 17.65% hitch weight of 1,200 pounds would be just about 8,000 pounds gross trailer weight.
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GCW = 14,780 = well below the EcoBoost GCWR of 17,000, so no problems pulling the load through the Hill Country.
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But overloading the truck by 800 pounds over the GVWR, and overloading the rear axle by 750 pounds over the rGAWR is not a good. So don't plan on towing an 8,000 pound 5er with an F-150 unless the F-150 has the HD Payload pkg.

smokeywren

WAIT! Futher research shows that Skyline makes at least one TT with 84" interior height - the same as their 5ers. The Walkabout 28BHS (bunkhouse with slide)
http://www.skylinerv.com/index.php?q...ID=4484&page=1

To see the spec for interior height, you must compare two different trailers. When looking at Walkabout travel trailers, the models 28BHS and 28RB will be on the same screen, so you can tick the "compare" space for those two, then click the compare button elsewhere on the screen. Then you'll see the specs, including interior height. Since the other 28-footers all have 78" ceiling, I suspect that 84" ceiling in the specs for the 28BHS may be an error, so check it out before you spend your money.