We pull into the Dodge dealer (I purchased my 2013 Jeep from the same dealer), and were warmly greet by Armando. He is equally "mask-impaired". We figure it's a truck salesman thing. We explain what we were doing, and he shows us a 2019 Dodge Ram 2500 Laramie. We drive it, we like it, we buy it on the spot. We look up the towing capacity and we are within the limits. It has the built in fifth wheel puck system for mounting the hitch, so we think we are golden (more on that later) Theresa works her magic and we trade in both our cars for this truck. The more we drive it the more comfortable we feel in it. It has all sorts of safety features and cameras that make us feel that we are in the right truck for us. There was just a gnawing suspicion that we didn't have the right truck for what we wanted to tow.
Back the Truck Up
Houston....we have a problem!
Well since we decided we were going to go with the Truck/Fifth Wheel combination, we figured we better look into buying a truck. We've never owned a truck, we never wanted a truck, so this was going to be a learning curve. Since we had a good idea of what we wanted to tow, we figured that would be all we needed to provide our trusty salesman and they would point us in the right direction. [insert maniacal laughter here]
We set out on one Saturday to make the rounds of truck dealers to get an idea of the just how big a truck we would fell comfortable driving. I knew a Ford Truck salesman so I figured we'd start off there first. We walk into the dealer, ask for our friend, and were informed he doesn't work there any more. We sit down with a guy and he shows us a pamphlet of truck types. He asks us what we plan to tow, and suggests a 1 ton dually, which they don't have available to drive. Since he wasn't really who we wanted to talk to, and he also was "mask-impaired," we decided to try the Dodge dealer down the road.
Payload...What's That?!?
The FB groups were filled with a common question, "Can we tow X with Y?" and, the more we read them, it kept bothering us that we might have purchased the wrong truck. Our daughter, Danielle, had informed us that they wanted to move to Seattle, but one problem, they didn't feel comfortable driving a U-Haul in downtown Seattle. I don't blame them, I didn't want to do it either, but as good parents we offered to help. Eureka, we have this new truck, why don't we just get a trailer and tow all the stuff up to Seattle, then we'll tow our stuff to PA to put it in our fifth wheel, perfect, right??
So in order to rent a trailer from U-Haul, you have to prove that you have a vehicle capable of towing it safely. I knew that we had the truck to tow the trailer, but while we were at it, we would finally confirm that we could tow the fifth wheel we wanted. We found a towing calculator so all we had to do was enter the numbers in and voila!! instant answers. Wait a second, what is Pin Weight, and payload, and GCWR?!?! OMG our head was spinning, because each website we would look up would call the same thing something different.
Long story short, we didn't have enough payload. The weight of the fifth wheel (hitch weight) was about 1400 pound more than what the truck could haul. Oh shit....ARMAAAAANDOOOOOO!! We got on the horn with Armando and explained our situation. We felt a little stupid for not knowing this, but also felt that knowing that we were first time truck buyers and knowing what we were doing with the truck we would be steered in the right direction by either the RV or Truck Salesman, but alas it was really up to us to know this. Fortunately, having a spouse who teaches sales for a multimillion dollar company comes in handy! She was able to persuade them to make things right, but there was one problem....no inventory. This whole "due to COVID" excuse was getting pretty old as we were running short of time.
We were coming home to rescue the Estate Sale (more on that later) when we called the dealer as we saw they had a 3500 Laramie in stock. It was brand new, so we would have to pay for the upgrade, but we would have the truck we want and the truck we need. The dealer was nice enough to refund all of our money, and apply it all to the new truck. They even moved the running boards and truck cover from the old truck as well as giving us the spray in bed liner as they did with the first truck. It was as if the first truck purchase never happened. We couldn't have been happier with the way that turned out.
