Folks,
I own a Travelaire 1985 19' 5er. It is a beautiful trailer in amazing condition inside. Due to its age, it is kinda heavy for its size. It has a box steel frame and barely a piece of aluminum to be found. Loaded with stuff it is between 4klbs and 4.5klbs. I have towed it for 4 yrs with a 1987 GMC 1500 4x4 with a 305cid and a 3 spd manual tranny. That truck was great to pull it up stupid steep slopes at a crawl in some of the places I prefer to camp. However, on anything other than level ground I ran out of gears/hp about 70kph (bull low, 1 and 2 were good - 3rd gear was too tall a gear for engine and trailer). Driving in and out of coulees in sw Alberta this year made me say 'enough is enough'. I swear I was holding up grannies on walkers. I probably should have checked this before I bought truck in sig but I heard Dodge with CTD and got excited. Should I assume that all will be good to go with my truck assuming I have good trailer brakes and truck is well looked after?

 

You will be more then fine, my gooseneck weights in around 5k and my trucks pulls it with out a problem. Your trailer should be no issue.

HTH

 

Having towed a 9k race trailer with a 95 1500, and then finally getting an 01 CTD.....it was a godsend!!

 

Sounds like you have made a good choose. I ran a similar truck for many years with no major problems and towed a lot more wt.
You should be aware however that in the late 90 to late 2000 year models there are some known problems that are better off prevented than fixed, a lot less expensive also. The main one being the injector pump and fuel pump arrangement the fuel pump from the factory is junk and when it goes out it will cause the injector pump to fail. The easy and low dollar fix is to install a pusher pump on the frame. This will take care of the problem. Also as most on here will say it is best to install at least a fuel PSI gage. Do a search in the 2nd gen section you should have all the info you need. If you have questions I have found the group here to be very knowledgeable and tolerant.
Welcome to the board

 

4500 lbs is very light for a tow on a dodge diesel. You will be in heaven compared to the gasser.

 

I'm towing a 7k trailer and can barely tell it's there... on low grades hills it won't even downshift, just haul...

 

When I worked at Quality Drive Away, I delivered a unit from Northern IN to Seattle (Tacoma) that was 18000 pounds with a 3500 CTD.

They made me take it because I have a CDL. I thought I was in for it but that was one great ride all the way out.

My mother in law's travel trailer is 5k. She makes me move that thing to every lake campground here in N. Indiana. I forget I'm towng it it's so light.

There's a twin screw Capacity Yard spotter at our local scrap yard that hauls 'fluff' (shredded cars and school buses and other metal) out of the Shredder over to the trailer yard. Each one of those trailers will make a rig weigh around 100,000 pounds. The Capacity has the same engine in it that we have.

 

If the rear sgas, you may want some airbags. I doubt that wil be an issue. A 5k fiver will not hardly register with these trucks. They are weight hauling beasts!

 

Glad to know I made the right choice. I love my old half-ton Chevy gasser (it has been made a full-time snowplow now) but I did not love towing with it at all. There were a number of white knuckle moments with people making unsafe passes around me on mountain roads since I was holding them up so much. Hopefully this will put the pleasure back in camping.

 

Some pics of the rig would be great. With some exceptions there aren't that many 5'ers that age on the road. (Appearance irrelevant!)

 

I will post a pic of it with the old tow rig later today. In all honesty, the trailer is in just about the same condition it was the day it rolled off the lot - except the decals have faded a bit. The po was my wife's aunt and she was crazy about keeping it in good condition. Wife and I have kept up on the maintenance. The interior is in the same condition as most trailers rolling off the lot today EXCEPT that everything was built really strong back then. I am really disappointed with how cheaply built RV's are these days. My rv friends ae always replacing cracked and broken stuff after a few miles on the backroads of Alberta. My steel framed unit just keeps on keepin on.