re: RV towing with a 1/2 ton (minor update)

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hope so as I will be towing a 30’ travel trailer with a Dry weight of 8000 lbs with a Ram 1500 crew cab with the hurricane engine but with the 3.92 differential and standard towing package but will use an Equalizer hitch.

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You'll have to let me know how it goes. I'm currently torn between just going ahead and getting the RV or getting a 3/4 ton.

Of course the RV my wife really likes has a dry weight of over 9k and is 38 feet so that's a no go. Truck prices make me sick to my stomach, Chevy/gm/ram are all 60-80k new and used isn't much better if at all.

It most certainly is!!!

Actually, the 10k GVWR thing is very important with commercial vehicles. It's the dividing line between being DOT regulated and not. The dodge just has shite payload at 10k GVWR with the diesel because the trucks curb weight is so high. When I had mine rigged up for Colorado (135 gallons of fuel, jacks, spare tires, chains, etc) it was 9,200 pounds... I didn't scale it once it was fully loaded and west bound but I bet it was 9,999 pounds. You get there quick with a 2,000 pound engine.

Ram really did an innovative thing by coil springing the 3/4 tons. First manufacturer to actually design the truck for it's rated weight, which helps the ride quality a lot vs the traditional approach of taking your 14k GVWR 1 ton truck and pulling leaf springs out until the ride became tolerable and calling it a 3/4 ton. The bad thing about the coil springs is that the whole thing is designed for 10k GVWR and does not like being overloaded to hell, where the leaf spring 3/4 tons don't care as much. It really shouldn't matter though, nobody should be putting 3,500 pounds on the hitch with any 3/4 ton.

I'm not selling mine although I jack around with the idea quite often. It's paid off.

3/4 ton diesels make sense in select few applications but the general rule is that if you NEED a diesel, you probably NEED a 1 ton dually. 3/4 ton gas trucks are extremely awesome if you can deal with the ~ 4/5 less MPG vs a half ton gasser or 1 ton diesel.

I like the F250 diesel smashed to the bump stops with 50' long triple axle grand design going 75mph over the whiskey bay bridge. The half tons with normal sized campers scare me less than those things. They are probably grossing 25+k with 15k on the truck axles by the time they put their wife in the truck cab and 2 yetis in the bed and God only knows what up in the bow of the camper.