Is that a dump body raised up there? How can you use this hitch with that in the way?

There's a secret trap door in the floor of the flatbed, right now its just a big honkin hole but soon, I'll weld on some hinges.

I know it's a big f550, but what kind of 5th wheel are you planning on towing? Sure it's a dually, but still not a tandem axle or anything, putting all the weight behind the axle would still seem sketchy to me if it were anything seriously heavy. It's gotta be better than having it hanging all the way off the ass of the truck like a regular hitch, but if it's something that needs a 5th wheel hitch then it's probablygot some serious weight. Have you ever driven an extremely rear-heavy load in strong wind? Even in a big truck it's an unsettling feeling having little weight on your steering tires to say the least. I trust your experience, but I probably wouldn't do that on something I drive unless it was only for one specific purpose and I knew it was fine.

Well, planning for the worst, I'd say a max of 40k, but most likely 15-20k And yes, all the conventional wisdom says if you put a GN hitch behind the rear axle you'll contract herpies, gout, and almost immediately die a horrible firey death worthy of CHiPs. This hitch can slide from anyplace 12 inches behind to six inches in front of the rear axle. I have driven a 30k trailer on a bumper hitch, it wasn't too horrible but I'd rather have all that weight 1 foot behind the rear axle instead of six feet behind the rear axle. I've also driven a ranger x country towing an 8k trailer loaded to about 9k, 1800 lb tongue load on a ranger wasn't at all fun, totally unstable.

So, to throw down a little maths, before I started I had 10800 tare, 6100 pounds on the front axle, turning the dump hoist around changed that to 6150 steer axle and 4700 pounds on the drives. Adding 8000 pounds to a hitch 12 inches behind the rear axle, max suggested for a GN trailer 20-25% this takes 551 pounds from the front axle, (same approximate delta as driving with or without snowplow) so my front axle weight is still around 5550 pounds, heavier than the entire weight of a loaded Chevy Tahoe. This brings my rear axle weight to 13,000 and still under my axle weight rating of 15k At current for the GN trailer to not horribly destroy the current bed, the hitch needs to be about 8 inches behind the rear axle, currently its at 10 inches, will try it there and scoot it forward. The new bed that's coming is a lower profile bed so its possible I can pick up another two inches as the current bed is almost a foot in depth. The new bed will be all aluminum, and a fair bit shorter while being stronger but not much lighter, but far less rusty

Well sounds like you have thought it out plenty then, hah I don't assume you'd be the type to just throw some shit together and run it. It's just my nature to see something like that and raise an eyebrow not knowing all the details.

Hah, I can imagine that trip in the ranger must have sucked. What were you towing? Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

Reminds me of when I bought my half ton Suburban out in Colorado and proceeded to throw a good 3000lbs in the back to make the trip east. This was before I got it home and had a chance to upgrade anything so it was sitting on super soft 30 year old leaf springs and some bald and dry 235/75-15 goodyear wranglers. Of course I wanted to make sure everything would fit so I put no thought into loading it by weight, putting all the big hollow items up front and the smaller heavier tools right at the tailgate. Lol the thing looked like it was about to do a wheelie. Man every time the wind blew I'd be in the next lane whether I wanted to be or not. Pull into a parking lot with any leftover snow in it and steering no longer existed. When I stopped halfway for the night I pulled everything out of that bitch in the parking lot and rearranged it.

Hah, never had a big truck get THAT bad, I'm sure a few inches on a 5th wheel won't throw you off anything that noticeably at least even if it does lighten the front a hair.

Friend was moving and in a $ bind, suggested, minimize and organize your crap, buy a trailer for your Ranger, move x country, deduct the trailer as a moving expense and I'll buy the trailer for the delta between purchase and write off. Well a few boxes turned out to be a lot of stuff. we determined we needed 14x7x6 to stack it all so went and got a 7x16 enclosed trailer. I'd also asked, 'weigh each box' to figure weight and balance. nope, didn't bother to do that, also said get 100 boxes of all uniform size, didn't weigh the boxes and got the uhaul house mover set, so I had to guess on the fly, first layer was all books, and then tons of random shit sized boxes. Uniform boxes crib stack super well. , bummer!. Once loaded I tossed it on the hitch, cranky cranky and woosh, right to the bump stops and kept on going down to squeeze the tires. An add-a-leaf trailer helper didn't. Armed myself with all the spring details, width, thickness and ellipse measurements, went to a scrap yard and found that aside from the 1 main leaf, a 92 Dodge 300 pickup had the same geometry, and it was sittting with the springs hanging in free air. Added four of the 1 ton leaves to the ranger pack, laced them in and still had enough u-bolt to cinch it down. Tongue weight was close to 1500 pounds +/- the ass end of the new R350 only squatted 2.5 inches with the heavier springs, rear tires run up to a full sidewall 65 psi. Front end raised up 2 inches so was fairly light but it was riding square and level. Put a bundle of Ikea furniture wood stacked solid 20x24x48 behind the seats to add more weight forward. Ranger had enough power and torque but it was an unstable load. If you held the wheel straight the whole rig would begin a sway in about 30 seconds. Easily fixed by adding in my own sway, bumping the steering wheel side to side an inch and a half every two seconds, plenty enough to keep the harmonics at bay. Made it coast to coast without issue.

I ended up with a 1 trip ramp gate trailer for $1200

uh huh huh uh huh I see your knob!

Get to polishin it!

When all else fails, customize it! :)

Make it better, stronger, bigger!