First thing we did was look at the owners manual to see what tow capacity we could be at including the hitch weight. You have your full tow capacity for us that is 9000 lbs. Hitch weight we can have 900 lbs. Total weight of truck and trailer weight is 15,000 lbs. Confusing right? We wanted to keep our dry weight of our RV at right around 7000 lbs. We searched and looked at hundreds of RV's to find the right RV for us. Our RV we have right now empty weight is about 7100 lbs dry weight. Dry weight means that the trailer is empty, when it comes off the line and goes to the dealer what is on it is considered the dry weight. Our trailer can go up to a GVWR of 8800 lbs. What that means is that we can add 1700 lbs worth of stuff. Sounds like a lot right? Not really.
While we were home we loaded up our RV with what we thought we needed to take and went and weighed it at a truck stop with a certified weigh scale. While weighing we weighed the truck separate first and then hitched back up and weighed the trailer on separate axles. Our hitch weight was good, however, we were 180 lbs over total weight. Doesn't sound like much but for us safety is #1 priority. So back to the house we went to unload additional items we didn't think we would need. After we finished unloading we were right at our 15,000 lbs capacity. During our travels our cat unfortunately ran away so we got rid of about 50 more lbs of stuff which put us under.
While sitting it is easy to get your weight back up so I am constantly looking at what we have to see what can be gotten rid of. It is an ongoing battle of making sure we are within our limits. I also brought along a couple of items that we will be adding to our hard drive and then getting rid of. These items are about 20 lbs each and every little bit helps.
Another item that will help is that we are actually losing our body weight as well. For me weight has been a struggle for most of my adult life. Now that we are on the road and we have a little boy that watches everything we do it is very important for us to teach him good eating and exercising habits. So far I've lost 5 lbs, I've been using the Lose It app on my I Phone. I have about 70 lbs that I would like to lose, and Tim has about 30. So if we can get down to our goal weights, not only will we both be healthier but our tow weight will be better as well, LOL.
I can't stress enough though how important weight is while towing. While researching we've seen many articles about accidents people had from being overweight. Please be safe and make sure you are towing at less than your capacity!!