tooltruckguy

New to the forum. I just purchased a 2013 STX with 5.0 L engine and 3.55 rear axle. I have the tow package installed. I looked thru the owners book and on the web and I'm very confused by all the numbers I find.

What is the towing capacity of my truck. Would it make a difference if I used a weight distributing hitch? I'm starting to look at a travel trailer and I want to know what weight trailer I could safely pull.

Thanks for your help.

Nautique

The sticker on your drivers door will give you your payload. You can go to ford.com/towratings and look it up

Ricktwuhk

Read through the posts on this forum, there is extensive information. Payload info for your truck is on your door tag. That, minus the weight of you and your passengers and cargo, minus the weight of your WDH, is what your tongue weight can be. There is a calc to then figure out max trailer weight.

Actually weighing the truck and trailer on CAT scales tell you reality. Here is a good discussion to start: https://www.f150forum.com/f82/help-c...ax-tow-272423/

smokeywren

Assuming your pickup is a SuperCab 4x4 with 145" wheelbase (6.5' bed), your GCWR is 13,500. Ford's "tow rating" is 7800 pounds, which assumes your wet and loaded pickup weighs only 5,700 pounds. But your wet and loaded pickup is going to weigh a lot more than 5,700 pounds, so ignore the tow rating and compute your own.

First let's clarify your question to:
What is the maximum weight of a tandem-axle trailer I can tow without exceeding any of Ford's weight limits?

Ford gives you the info you need to do the math, but you have to do the math yourself. Forget about the GCWR. That is not your limiter. If you use the GCWR (or tow rating which is derived from the GCWR) you will be overloaded when you put the wet and loaded rig on the road. Your limiter is the actual unused payload capacity of your pickup. Here's how to determine the answer to your question:

1] Load the pickup with everything that will be in it when towing - driver, passengers, cooler, tools, jacks, campfire wood? toys? and the head from your weight-distributing hitch. If you don't have the hitch yet, then add an estimated 50 pounds to the weight of the truck.

2] Drive to a truckstop that has a certified automated truck (CAT) scale.

3] Fill up with gas.

4] Weigh the wet and loaded pickup on the CAT scale.

5] Subtract the wet of the wet and loaded pickup from the GVWR of the pickup. (The GVWR of your pickup is on the Federal Certification Label on the driver's door jamb, the same label that includes the month/year of assembly of your pickup, the VIN, some codes, the GAWRs of your axles, tire size and PSI, and GVWR.)

6] Divide the answer from 5] above by 0.15 (15%) The answer will be the answer to your clarified question above.

A weight-distributing (WD) hitch is not an option - it's a requirement if your tongue weight can be over 500 pounds. And any RV trailer with GVWR over about 3,300 pounds is going to have a tongue weight of over 500 pounds.

A good WD hitch that costs you more than about $500 from a discount on-line source, when properly installed and adjusted, will distribute about 20% of the gross tongue weight back to the trailer axles. I would ignore that 20% and use it as a safety margin, but if you want to use the last pound of trailer weight capacity with no safety margin, then increase the max tongue weight of the trailer weight you calculated above by 20%. So if the max trailer tongue weight you calculated above is 600 pounds, then you can increase that to 720 pounds before you divide that by 0.15.

tooltruckguy

Thanks for the info gents. I get very confused trying to figure out all the numbers. I believe I now know how tom figure it out.