Towed my boat this week

Plus fuel, gear, people, dogs...it all adds up.

 

I saw someone on here awhile back that was talking bout a boat right at or above max tow rating. He didn't realize the boat's listed weight didn't include the engines, lol

 

Been on the scales with it? Or is it just reading the tags. How much fuel, beer etc.? I tow a 3500 lb loaded camper I am fully aware it's behind me even at that weight.

 

Reading tags on both boats, haven’t had any reason to put them on a scale. For most of the time I’ve had the big boat I used my Touareg (rated for 7716# towing) or something 1/2 ton to pull it.

The 2016 version of my Welcraft is 4200# dry with the engine, add 650# for 100 gallons of fuel, 72# for 9 gallons of fresh water, trailer weighs 1246#, so that puts it at 6168# before gear. I would guess my gear is in the 300-400# range, so we are likely a little over the truck’s capacity. I don’t know if the older hull is lighter, but the trailer that came with the the boat is rated for 6000#GVWR.

My Noreast is a 2018, I’m assuming I can trust the numbers listed in the certificate of origin. I keep less than 100 pounds worth of gear on that one, and it’s only a 41 gallon gas tank.

 

Both boats are beautiful!

 

Trailer brake controller for sure.

 

Air bags work better imo.
Level out to 0 with any load.

 

If the trailer had electric brakes I wouldn't have an issue.
An 18 wheeler small semi truck cab pulls an 80,000 lb trailer just fine.

 

There’s a lot more to towing than just brakes. A 20k lb semi with a 5th wheel hitch is much different than a 5k lb Tacoma with a class 3 hitch.

 

A trailer brake controller won’t do much with the hydraulic surge brakes on my boat trailer.

 

Electric brakes implied. I removed my surge brakes from my boat trailer because it sucked.

 

For my use, approximately 50 miles per year on local roads, the surge brakes work well enough. The electric over hydraulic conversion is around $1000, I would consider it if I towed long distances on the highway.

 

We've been through this before. Toyota used SAE J 2807 towing standards to rate the truck higher than 6000.
I'll put my faith in the design engineers.
Do you think they would rate it that high due to liability concerns if it weren't capable ? Seriously doubt it.

 

it’s capable of towing 6k for sure. Obviously they are rated to tow over that. So when your cousin skeeter loads up his 6k dry fishing boat with gas, food, and all the gear and is pushing 7500+ lbs. Without a weight distributed hitch, too much tongue weight, and no helper springs. Toyota has to make sure the truck isn’t going to grenade going down the road and wipe out some minivan full of kids. But only some jackass would be towing something like that at high speeds or long trips through the mountains. Plus if the above did happen Toyota wouldn’t have any legal liability for anyone towing recklessly and beyond their rated limits.