Here’s How To Choose A Truck Or SUV For Your Camper So You Don’t Hurt Yourself This Summer

Camping season is finally here, which means that countless folks are going to lash campers up to their vehicles and hit the road. An unfortunate number of these towing setups are going to be overloaded, and part of it will be because their owners misunderstood how to pair their tow vehicle with their camper. Here’s how to choose a tow vehicle that can confidently tow your camper and get you to your destination without causing a crash or hurting someone.

My family is full of lifelong RVers. My parents grew up riding in and driving motorhomes we’d now call vintage today. I grew up riding in conversion vans pulling their own classic travel trailers. Now that I’m an adult and my parents are in their elder years, I’m the primary person in my family to call when some hauling needs to be done. My father, a former over-the-road trucker, taught me everything he knew. But I’ve also learned a lot myself over more than two decades.

Something I’ve noticed is that a lot of folks choose tow vehicles based only on tow rating and the base weight of their trailer. Sadly, I have to use my parents as an example here. Our 2007 Thor Adirondack 31BH weighs 6,461 pounds empty. So, whenever my parents shop for a new tow vehicle, they use “6,500 pounds” as their minimum tow rating requirement and then check no other stats.

This is not the way to pick a tow vehicle! In this situation, my parents have ended up with tow vehicles that have high tow ratings, but were still overloaded and overtaxed when towing this trailer, anyway. I’ll explain why.

Towing Capacity Isn’t Everything

The first nugget of advice that you’ll be given by dealerships and RV blogs is that your tow vehicle’s towing capacity needs to be greater than the gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of your trailer. This part is true.

In my experience, there’s a dirty secret to the numbers that some manufacturers quote for base weight. The “empty” in that weight often means a trailer that doesn’t have a single option, isn’t carrying a drop of water, and doesn’t even have propane tanks installed.

Because of this, your trailer actually automatically weighs more than quoted because it’s going to have propane tanks, and it’s going to have some options and other equipment. The base weight is also more of a guideline because the final weight of a completed trailer may be close, but not exactly the stated weight. The only way to know for sure would be to pull your trailer onto a certified scale. Don’t be surprised to find out that your camper weighs hundreds of pounds more than the brochure says.

That’s before you even add anything. Our Adirondack holds 46 gallons of fresh water. Assuming around 8 pounds per gallon, that’s a whopping 368 pounds added to the trailer before you add anything else. But that’s part of why you don’t want to just choose a tow vehicle based on base weight. At minimum, your vehicle’s tow rating should exceed your trailer’s GVWR, or the maximum rated weight of your trailer after gear, water, options, and other bits of kit are added.

This is where some car dealerships and some RV blogs stop talking, and I have a problem with that. Towing capacity is not the end-all of what you need to consider.

Beware The Tongue

One huge factor to consider is the trailer’s tongue weight. Your tow vehicle has axles rated to carry only a certain amount of weight. Your tow vehicle’s trailer hitch receiver and hitch itself also have weight limits that shouldn’t be exceeded.

Let’s return to my family’s 2007 Adirondack. According to the brochure, the trailer has a dry hitch weight of 723 pounds. However, because of all of the factors I noted above, the actual weight of that tongue can actually be far heavier. This can lead to some interesting situations.

My 2006 Volkswagen Touareg V10 TDI was marketed as a towing beast, and for the most part, it is a monster. The SUV has a towing capacity of 7,716 pounds, which is practically monstrous for a two-row SUV of its size. If you go by towing capacity, you’d think the Touareg would have no problem with the Adirondack. The camper has a GVWR of 7,500 pounds, or less than the capacity of the Treg. Perfect, right?

Well, then you take a look at the other specs. The Touareg’s hitch has a maximum tongue weight limit of 716 pounds. Some hitch receivers may quote a higher tongue weight limit with a weight distribution hitch, which we’ll get to in a moment, but the Touareg does not. That means that even though the Treg has a good enough towing capacity, trying to tow the Adirondack with it would be overloading the Touareg.

Payload Matters

I’m not done yet. Your tow vehicle has a payload limit. Everything that you load into your tow vehicle, including gear, people, pets, modifications, roof rack boxes, and anything else it didn’t leave the factory with, subtracts from your payload. Your trailer’s tongue weight does, too.

My Touareg V10 TDI has a payload rating of 1,194 pounds. Just for giggles, let’s say you load up a trailer that has a hitch weight of exactly 716 pounds. You shouldn’t max out your tow vehicle’s capacity, but let’s use it as an example. Zap that from the payload, and that leaves you with just 478 pounds to play with. That’s 478 pounds for you, your family, Rover the dog, and your camping gear. Definitely don’t do what Volkswagen did and put over a dozen tons of ballast in your Touareg before towing a Boeing 747:

This is just another example of how a tow vehicle can have the correct towing capacity for a trailer, but cannot safely tow said trailer, anyway. If you cannot find your vehicle’s payload, you can get a rough number by subtracting your vehicle’s curb weight from GVWR.

Okay, fine. Let’s say that you buy a full-size half-ton American SUV with a big ol’ American V8 engine. That’s what my parents’ 2011 Chevrolet Suburban 1500 was. Great, right? Well, like my wife and lawyer say on a daily basis, “it depends.”

Our Suburban had the 5.3-liter V8 and an 8,000-pound tow rating. As far as my parents were concerned, that’s all they needed. However, I took note that the SUV had a payload rating of just 1,519 pounds. The Adirondack has a base tongue weight of 723 pounds. Now, because of what I mentioned earlier, there’s no chance it actually weighs 723 pounds. The propane tanks and battery add at least 100 pounds on their own. So, let’s say that the tongue weighs 830 pounds.

Attach that trailer to the Suburban and you’re left with 749 pounds to play with. That’s fine, right? It depends. My family is a big one. I weigh 200 pounds, as does my dad. That’s 400 pounds. My mom weighs 150 pounds, which results in 550 pounds. We also travel light, so when it’s just the three of us, we’re within limits. Adding my 130-pound wife doesn’t even take it over.

However, it’s clear that the Suburban wasn’t happy with this arrangement. The 5.3 got a workout just accelerating on flat ground, and the rig required a relatively heavy right foot just to maintain speed. Activate cruise control, and the SUV would lose speed. It also got 7 mpg on flat ground and 5 mpg or less in any other situation. That doesn’t even mention how it handled like I was driving a Texas Roadhouse.

It was an interesting change compared to my parents’ previous tow vehicle, a 2010 Ford Expedition EL. That SUV had a marginally better tow rating of 8,700 pounds and a marginally better payload of 1,570 pounds. It handled better, too, but got a whopping 5 mpg while towing the same trailer on totally flat ground. I just didn’t pay attention to the MPG guess-o-meter when doing anything else.

One way some folks may try to get around payload limitations is by installing an aftermarket suspension or air bags. While this may get your truck level, it’s not actually adding payload because payload numbers involve far more than just what your suspension can handle.

The biggest problem happened when my brother loaded his family into the Suburban. See, my brother’s family has six members in it, and add them all up and you’ll get about 950 pounds. Then they have a dog weighing at least 50 pounds, plus gear for two adults, two big teens, and two kids. They didn’t even come close to meeting the payload of the Suburban. I wasn’t one bit surprised when my brother began reporting that the Suburban struggled so much with his family and the Adirondack that he didn’t feel safe exceeding 60 mph.

My parents have since upgraded their vehicles. Dad now has a 2016 Ford F-350 Super Duty Crew Cab SRW. That truck, which flexes some muscle with a 6.2-liter V8, can tow a 12,500-pound camper and has a 3,000-pound payload. The Ford handles the Adirondack and the family’s newer, heavier 2022 Heartland Mallard M33 like the trailer owes it money, which is great! The truck also has lots of capability to spare, which I also like. It sounds silly, but I’d rather have them get too much truck than too little.

Alright, so we’ve covered GVWRs, towing capacities, hitch weight limits, and payloads. All of those are critical. What else is there?

Staying Within Limits

You’ll also need to be concerned with Gross Combined Weight Rating. This is the rated maximum safe weight of your tow vehicle plus a loaded trailer. Let’s bring that 2011 Suburban back into the picture. It has a GCWR of 14,000 pounds. Some people will subtract their truck’s GCWR from their truck’s GVWR to determine a buffer. Our Suburban had a GVWR of 7,200 pounds. That means towing a trailer of around 6,800 pounds in order to leave some room. Of course, the vehicle can tow the full 8,000 pounds as advertised, and the vehicle’s engineers have gone through a lot of work to prove it can do it safely, but it’s a good idea to have some excess capacity.

You also need to be concerned with axle weights. As I said earlier, your trailer’s tongue is a lot of weight, and under normal conditions, the rear axle is carrying most of that load. A lot of manufacturers recommend the use of a weight distribution hitch above certain weights. The 2011 Suburban’s hitch holds only 600 pounds of tongue weight by itself. GM says that towing a heavier tongue requires the use of a weight distribution hitch.

This nifty device works by using giant spring bar tensioners and links between a special trailer hitch and the trailer’s frame to effectively join your truck frame to your trailer frame. When these bars are tensioned, often through the use of chains, and lever, and pins, the actual tongue weight remains the same, but now the weight is more balanced across the truck and trailer frames instead of weighing down on mostly just the truck’s rear axle.

In essence, you’re sort of lifting the truck’s rear end up. Check this video out:

One thing to remember here is that a “WD” hitch is not a cheat code to tow more weight. My Touareg’s 716-pound tongue limit is a strict one. Adding a WD hitch doesn’t mean I’ll be able to tow the Adirondack safely. A WD hitch also doesn’t mean you can intentionally overload the front of your trailer. Our resident suspension engineer, Huibert Mees, wrote an excellent explainer on proper trailer loading, the physics of tongue weight, and why trailers sway. Click here to read it.

The general rule of thumb is that you want to load your trailer so that 10 percent to 15 percent of the total weight is on the tongue. Some camper designs already have extremely heavy tongues, so keep this in mind when you load your trailer. These illustrations from Huibert show the problem with allowing too much weight to sit on your hitch and thus your rear axle. Here’s a base vehicle:

Now that vehicle with a 3,500-pound trailer with 10 percent of its weight on the tongue:

This is safe in this scenario. Now watch what happens when you put most of the weight on the hitch, either through trailer design or loading:

This is an unsafe configuration, one that overloads the rear axle and unloads the front axle. It can be a disaster waiting to happen. Either way, you need to make sure your vehicle’s axle ratings, which can often be found in your vehicle’s documentation, can actually handle your chosen trailer.

Some tow vehicles have other considerations and stated limits, such as the frontal surface area of the trailer that you’ll be towing. Likewise, you’ll find that many modern vehicles have internal programming to reduce trailer sway. Some of these vehicles will recommend against using an old-school friction-based anti-sway device on your trailer hitch when the vehicle’s anti-sway program is active. These smaller aspects of towing will be revealed by your owner’s manual.

There’s also some just good general guidance out there. A lot of folks won’t choose a trailer that exceeds 80 percent of any stated capacity of a tow vehicle. The belief is that not running at the limit is safer and better for longevity. Others will intentionally buy a vehicle that’s too huge because they expect to buy a bigger trailer at a later date. That’s also fine.

Some trailer and towing equipment manufacturers also recommend following a wheelbase rule to ensure better stability. This advice dictates that 110 inches of wheelbase is good for up to a 20-foot trailer. Every four-inch increase in truck wheelbase from there gets you another foot of trailer length. My family’s Adirondack trailer is 35’5” long, which suggests that we would want a vehicle with around 168 or 170 inches of wheelbase for a safe tow.

Some of these manufacturers don’t consider the wheelbase ratio to be a hard rule. In 2023, I used a Tundra TRD Pro CrewMax short bed truck, which has a 145.7-inch wheelbase, to tow the Adirondack. If you follow the wheelbase ratio rule, the Tundra is good for a 29-foot trailer. However, in my towing experience, the Tundra was a beast with the Adirondack.

I will stress that it won’t be like this in every case. So it’s still a good rule to try to adhere to. This rule is also why it would not be a great idea to tow a long trailer with a Jeep Wrangler or with my Volkswagen Touareg. The towing capacity might be there, but the wheelbase is far too short to tow a long trailer in a stable manner.

One bit of advice out there includes twisting your safety chains a couple of times before latching them onto the tow vehicle to ensure they don’t drag on the ground. Update: This actually appears to be old advice. As a reader pointed out, this can reduce the chain’s strength:

An alternative way to deal with chains that are too long would be to loop them through the anchor point on your vehicle. In my experience, some new RV designs have very thick hooks, so you may have to experiment or have the chain shortened for your vehicle.

You also want to make sure that the emergency braking cable is connected as well. That way, if the worst scenario does happen and something causes your truck to disconnect, your camper doesn’t turn into a stick-built missile on the highway.

Chicken And The Egg

One question many folks have is “Which one do I buy first?” Personally, I would first identify the trailer that you want. Learn its spec sheet and then find a tow vehicle that can safely tow the trailer. As I noted above, a lot of folks choose tow vehicles where no one metric exceeds 80 percent of the tow vehicle’s rated capacity. That’s a good start. I would then test drive that vehicle and see if you’re comfortable with it. If you are, you are good to go!

Some people will buy their dream camper first and then figure out the tow vehicle afterward. While this certainly works, I personally wouldn’t do it. You may find out that the best vehicles for your trailer are ones that you don’t want to drive. If you buy the tow vehicle first, you could choose a different trailer. But if you buy the trailer first, now you’re either trying to sell the trailer or forcing yourself to drive a vehicle you’re not comfortable with.

But I suppose that last part is up to you.

As a bit of housekeeping, I will also note that what I’ve written applies to how towing works in the United States. Europeans follow different standards. Their trailers often have less tongue weight and axles closer to the center of the trailer. European trailers also have a different center of mass that’s closer to that axle. The short version is that Europeans can tow big trailers with tiny cars, but they have to travel slowly and have a lower degree of overall safety. Americans can tow more weight and tow it faster. So, don’t look at the European tow rating for your vehicle and think you’re automatically good to go.

Of course, one of the best things you can do is learn how to tow a trailer the proper way. Thankfully, there are schools online and in real life that can teach you how to safely tow your camper. Towing isn’t just hitching up and driving. You need to be cognizant of increased stopping distances, trailer sway, trailer swing, making wide turns, and more.

Hopefully, this helps. If you somehow missed everything else, just know that towing capacity is not the only metric that matters. At any rate, warm weather is finally here! It’s time to hit the road and create some great memories with your family. Choose the right camper and the right tow vehicle and you’re two steps closer to ensuring fantastic memory creation for years to come.