Pin weight, payload and the yellow door sticker: matching a truck to a repo fifth wheel before you bid

that is a better list than most people arrive at after they buy. three corrections and one addition.

the dry hitch weight on the sticker is from the factory with no battery, no propane, no spare and nothing in the front storage. on a 40 footer the batteries, two 30 pound bottles and a generator all live ahead of the axles, so nearly all of that lands on the pin. 400 pounds over the sticker before you pack a sock is normal. 3,420 actual on a trailer with a 2,900 sticker is the usual story, not an outlier.

20 percent of GVWR is the right planning number and 25 is the honest one for front living. your 3761FL at 16,800 is 3,360 to 4,200 on the pin. against 2,460 of payload that is not close, that is a different book.

the number that matters more than payload on a fifth wheel is the rear axle rating. the pin sits over the rear axle, so unlike a travel trailer almost none of it transfers forward. find RAWR on that same yellow sticker, scale your rear axle the way you drive, and the difference is your real pin budget. then look at GCWR for the combination, which is where a gas truck runs out of room before a diesel does.

and take a tape measure to the truck, not just a calculator. bed length decides your hitch, and nobody tells you that until you own both.

i am the cautionary tale of this board, so here are my four numbers and you can do what you like with them.

door sticker payload 3,460. trailer sticker dry hitch 2,795. scaled pin loaded 3,280. hitch, two people, two dogs and the back seat, call it 420. that is 3,700 against 3,460, so i am 240 over, and i learned it after the money moved.

i am not going to pretend 240 over is dangerous, because my rear axle and my tires are both inside their numbers on the ticket. it is over, which means it is not what the sticker says and i have no argument to make to anybody about it. do it in the order the kid laid out up there. i did it backwards because i fell for a floorplan and because the truck was already in the driveway, and the fix is a dually, which costs more than every other mistake in this thread put together.

the m&a listing on my 380FL had the weight sticker in photo 11. i read it. i read it after i had already decided.

the thing nobody budgets for is what living in it weighs.

we moved into the pinnacle in 2019 with what we thought was nothing. by the end of the first year we had added 1,600 pounds. tools, a generator, a folding bike, canned goods, a cast iron collection my wife will not discuss. and 60 gallons of fresh water at 8.34 pounds a gallon is 500 pounds by itself, most of it sitting forward of the axles on these front living layouts.

so when ted says 25 percent for front living, that is not pessimism. shop with a pin number 400 pounds above whatever you calculate and you will be about right in year two.

this is the thread i wanted on this board, so let me add the gravel lot version of it.

in sixteen years i had three trucks come into my park with the rear tires visibly bulging and one with a leaf spring through the bed floor. every one of them was a fifth wheel bigger than the truck, and every one of them had a receipt from a dealership that let it happen. nobody at a sales desk is going to stop you. the yellow sticker and a scale ticket are the only two things in this entire process that are not trying to sell you something.

this is also why i ask for bed length and the payload number in your signature line. half the questions on this forum answer themselves once those two are visible.

a repo listing will at least show you the real sticker if you ask for the photo, which is more than a brochure will do. m&a apparently sends them inside two days, and the lot numbers people are posting in this thread are doing everybody a favor.

outcome, six weeks later, and it is not the one i wanted.

scaled the f-250 at the pilot on coliseum: 4,180 front, 3,420 rear, 7,600 total with me and the dog and the toolbox in it. so my real remaining payload is 2,400. ted's 25 percent against anything with a 16,800 GVWR leaves me 1,000 to 1,800 pounds short. no hitch, no airbags and no amount of reading fixes 1,800 pounds.

so i am buying the truck first. looking at used 2019 and 2020 f-350 single rear wheel with the 6.7, which puts me somewhere between 3,900 and 4,300 of payload depending on cab and axle. a dually would be better and my driveway is eleven feet wide.

the honest part: the reflection 303RLS i was actually watching, 46,000, closed while i was standing at that scale. that one i could have towed. that is what six weeks of learning what i should have known in an afternoon costs. something else will come up on m&a inside a month or two, and next time the truck will already be sitting in the driveway.