willgatlin25

Have a 2013 F150 Platinum 4x4 3.5 Eco. I have no idea if it has a max tow pkg or what it's capable of towing. This weekend I plan on hooking up a construction dump trailer and dumping gravel and dirt for my backyard. I was planning on just using a regular tow ball, nothing fancy because I don't plan on towing very often.

Question is- I don't really understand the toung weight thing. It seems like if I put a ton of gravel in the trailer distributed evenly it's going to be putting a lot more than 500 pounds or so on the hitch itself and that's where my concern is. I've heard you're supposed to put 60% of the weight near the front of the trailer but won't this put an insane amount of weight on the hitch itself?

My assumption is that the trailer will weigh somewhere near 5000-7000 pounds when fully loaded and only two adults in the cab. Will I have an issue towing this or anything I need to know?

Thanks.

smokeywren

The only way to know for sure what is your tongue weight is to weigh the tongue when wet and loaded for the road. To do that, you need a tongue weight scale or two trips across a CAT scale, one with the trailer on and one without the trailer. The difference in the weight on the 4 tires of the tow vehicle is tongue weight.


Assuming a properly-designed trailer, then you can expect about 13% of gross trailer weight to be on the tongue. So if your trailer grosses 5,000 pounds, and you spread the weight of the dirt and gravel evenly on the floor of the trailer, your tongue weight should be about 650 pounds. If your loaded trailer grosses 7,000 pounds, that's about 910 pounds of tongue weight.


Ford says you should never tow a trailer with more than 500 pounds of tongue weight on a weight-carrying (WC) hitch. Your receiver is probably not rated for more than 500 pounds of tongue weight on a WD hitch. So if you are going to tow that loaded trailer with a WC hitch, then you need to reduce the load in the trailer to not more than about 3,800 pounds. IOW, haul only about half as much dirt and gravel as you planned each trip, then make more trips.


Or better yet, invest in a weight-distributing (WD) hitch and install it on the trailer before you haul the first load.



If you overload the receiver hitch, the problem is that could result in a broken receiver and a trailer barreling down the road out of control. Don't overload your receiver. If you don't want to invest in the WD hitch to haul that load without exceeding the tongue weight limit of the hitch, then reduce the weight in the trailer so you have less hitch weight.