Towing North Point With Ram 3500 Short Bed

jwedell

Senior Member
Joined
May 30, 2011
Posts
1,575
Location
Long Island
I would like to trade in my Ram 3500 Dually for a single rear wheel short bed crew cab. I tow from New York to Florida only once a year and take 5 days to do it. I would like to know if anyone tows with that setup and if it feels safe.
 
My 2 cent, are you going Gas or Diesel, for your 5th wheel you are looking at 15,250lbs and 20 percent of that is 3050lbs not including the hitch, so it will be doable.

Now for towing that 38'9" long 5th wheel to tow it with a short bed it can be done but I would think that you would want a long wheel base to handle that length of 5th wheel, I have seen it done towing cross-country all the time but I don't know what's it like, maybe someone will chime in who have that setup.
 
We have a 3500 SRW but it is a long bed and it does a fine job of pulling our Pinnacle
 
Maybe not helpful since we have a Ford srw with a long bed but it tows our Pinnacle so well. The ride is really good and we've been to the Colorado Rockies a several times with it. I have no problem keeping up with traffic. Our previous two trucks were duals which are the same length but the srw just drives easier since I don't have to account for the wide hips.

Your NP is basically the same length as our Pinnacle but not sure about the weight comparisons. It's GVWR is 15,500. Fully loaded for a month long trip it weighed 14,700 with 3120 hitch weight. When we bought our truck I really wanted a short bed but what I ran into was the yellow sticker load capacities. A short bed Ford F350 had around 3200 to 3300 pound load capacities with a GVWR of 11,500. That didn't leave much room for us and whatever we carry. GM's were similar. I didn't look at Ram. Configuring a Ford long correctly upped the GVWR to 12,400 and the capacity of our Ford is 4054.

GM has since upped their 3500 short beds to 12,100 so that would give more capacity. Again, not sure about Ram. I'm not a member of the weight police, ever. Just an FYI of what I encountered.
 
My Denali is a 2500 with a GVW of 11,300, the first thing I did was to add airbags, it took away the pin weight pushing the truck down on bridge joints and crappy roads, plus it looks a **** of a lot better level.
 

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