Hitting the Road
Find the right truck for your towing needs.
Find the right truck for your towing needs.
For many of us, enjoying our horses involves transportation. Whether it’s hauling to a show or event, meeting friends at the trail head for a long ride or heading out for a weekend of camping and riding, you want to get there—and home again—safely. In a perfect world, you’d know exactly what your hauling needs are going to be so you could buy a truck and trailer at the same time. In reality, it rarely works out this way.
NRS Trailers is one of the country’s largest premier trailer dealerships, with locations in five states. Rusty Willis, general manager and service manager at the Ocala, Fla., location has worked in the trailer industry for 30 years. In his experience, many horse owners who are buying their first trailer or upgrading to a better trailer are hoping to get by with using their current vehicle to tow it.
Willis says the most common towing mistake is trying to pull too much trailer with a less-thansufficient tow vehicle. The danger here is that the loaded trailer can end up controlling the situation, which can lead to disaster.
“People ask me all the time, ‘Can my truck pull this trailer?’” says Willis. “Their truck might be able to pull it, but being able to stop safely is the most important part of hauling anything. This is the biggest liability. The biggest folklore around is just considering how much you can pull. It’s really about how much you can stop safely.”
TruCk sPeCs
Whether you already have a trailer or are shopping for one, knowing how much weight you’ll tow on a regular basis tells you if you have enough vehicle to safely do the job—or if you’ll need something different.
Add together: the weight of trailer the weight of horses the weight of all tack and gear
This gives you a starting point of what your vehicle must have in towing capacity, which is listed in the owner’s manual.
It’s over-simplifying to say a half-ton truck (like the Ford F-150, Ram/Chevrolet/GMC 1500, and others) is always fine for a two-horse trailer. That’s because the same model and year truck can have a different engine size, transmission, rear axle ratio and wheelbase.
For example, the range of towing capacity of the 2020 Ford F-150 differs by several thousand pounds (7,700 to 13,200 pounds), depending on the engine, even though they are all rated as half-ton trucks (half-ton refers to the carrying capacity in the cab and bed of the truck).
Engines also vary in horsepower and torque. Torque, which is the power that gets the wheels moving from a stop, is considered more important than horsepower when towing. The more weight you’re hauling, the more torque you need.
The increased torque in some newer models enables a half-ton truck with a six-cylinder engine (V6) to pull more weight than the same model truck with an eight-cylinder engine (V8).
A truck manufacturer’s website can tell you what a truck is rated to pull, but you should know that these figures are not designed with live cargo in mind. A boat or camper isn’t going to shift and move around like live animals can. Towing experts advise that any time you’re hauling live cargo, you should stay below 70 to 75 percent of the vehicle’s max tow rating.
Tow ratings also don’t take into account terrain, which is important to consider if you’re regularly hauling in areas with significant uphill and downhill driving.
Fuel efficiency should never be your first priority when selecting a tow vehicle. Yes, we all want to save money, but a tow vehicle that is safe and powerful enough to pull and stop your precious cargo is more important than saving a few bucks at the pump.
To safely pull a horse trailer, your truck will need a tow package, which typically includes a heavy-duty class V hitch, wiring harness, and brake control. Depending on the vehicle model, it may also include a heavy-duty battery, transmission cooler, and other features.
Most full-size trucks have an anti-lock brake system (ABS), but you’ll still want separate electric brakes on your trailer.
A frame-mounted hitch, welded directly to the vehicle’s frame, is necessary for towing a horse trailer. The fifth wheel (also called a gooseneck) hitch is mounted to the frame in the middle of the truck bed and centered over the rear axles.
The wide variety of trucks and trailers on the road today testifies to the fact that horse owners have very different wants, needs and budgets. Below is a look at three broad categories, one of which you are likely to fall into.
Weekend WArrior
Typically, this is the single-horse owner who hauls regularly to events and/or trail rides. Their trailer might have a tack compartment, but not living quarters.
Paige Macfarland (no relation to writer) of Green Valley, Ariz., tows a straight-load twohorse, bumper pull CM trailer to take her Quarter Horse gelding to trail rides, and often hauls a friend’s horse as well. Her trailer weighs 2,500 pounds empty, and when loaded with two horses and tack, comes in just under 5,000 pounds.
Macfarland bought the trailer new nine years ago when she was towing with a 2008 Ford F-150.
“A couple years ago, I upgraded to a 2016 F-150 with 3.5L EcoBoost Twin-Turbocharged V6,” says Macfarland. Her new truck has a max towing capability of 12,200 lbs.
“This engine is a step up, and my other truck was getting up there in mileage,” she says. “I had the tow package added, so I got exactly what I wanted, although now I wish I’d gotten the back-up camera.”
ChAsing BuCkles
An owner of two to three horses who hits the road regularly, driving varying distances,
usually has a three-horse slant-load trailer with a tack room and perhaps living quarters.
When Jill Brown of Williston, Fla., bought her three-horse slant-load, all-aluminum Shadow trailer, the dealer assured her their 2017 Ford F-150 with 2.7L EcoBoost V6 engine could handle it.
The 18-foot-long bumper pull trailer with front tack room is 7'6" tall, which adds some wind resistance, and weighs 2,400 pounds. Loaded with three horses plus equipment, the total weight is about 6,000 pounds, which was well below the truck’s towing capacity.
“I was able to pull it, but the truck frame just wasn’t stout enough, and the mileage dropped to 10 mpg when towing,” says Brown, who upgraded to a 2012 Ford F-350 dually with 6.7L Power Stroke diesel engine.
“This truck is more than sufficient for towing, and with the diesel engine, I still get 15 mpg even when towing a full load,” says Brown, who regularly hauls the family’s three