I know there was some debate awhile back on how these new 2011's would handle a load so I wanted to share my experiences so far. I'm a pipeliner and live out of 28 foot Gulf Stream Emerald Bay travel trailer when I am away from home working. My rig has one slide out on it and weighs 6952 dry and around 7800-8000lbs all loaded up. Anyway I am from flat land Oklahoma and am working in north central Pennsylvania. Now my truck is a 1500 crew cab 4x4 with the 5.3. It does have the HD cooling package and is rated at 7000lbs on the door/9500lbs with the cooling package. I run my electric brakes on full gain and do not lock the trailers brakes at all. Also have a weight distribution hitch to help level me out.
Where I am working at currently is about 20 miles into the appalachian foothills with 8.5-9% grade hills up and down. I can definitely tell the trailers back there when hitting those big hills, but I can gain speed up them if I want. Going down them is not too bad as long as my electric gain is on 10.0. Otherwise I can feel it push me some when braking. On the flat lands it still lets me know it's behind me, but I can easily pull a steady 65-70 running around 2000 RPMs. I only get about 8MPG in the big hills but maintain a nice 11-12 MPG out of the hills and climbs. Being the idiot I like to be sometimes I have slammed on my brakes just to see what she'd do and I am happy to say that it shut her down pretty fast. Take off requires you to rev on up, but once you hit your target speed it maintains well. In the hills I had to manual shift down to 3rd gear to gain speed....4th gear maintained it at a elevated rev.
Overall I am happy with the way my new truck tows. It truthfully doesn't tow this load much worse than my 2003 6.0 Dually did.
Where I am working at currently is about 20 miles into the appalachian foothills with 8.5-9% grade hills up and down. I can definitely tell the trailers back there when hitting those big hills, but I can gain speed up them if I want. Going down them is not too bad as long as my electric gain is on 10.0. Otherwise I can feel it push me some when braking. On the flat lands it still lets me know it's behind me, but I can easily pull a steady 65-70 running around 2000 RPMs. I only get about 8MPG in the big hills but maintain a nice 11-12 MPG out of the hills and climbs. Being the idiot I like to be sometimes I have slammed on my brakes just to see what she'd do and I am happy to say that it shut her down pretty fast. Take off requires you to rev on up, but once you hit your target speed it maintains well. In the hills I had to manual shift down to 3rd gear to gain speed....4th gear maintained it at a elevated rev.
Overall I am happy with the way my new truck tows. It truthfully doesn't tow this load much worse than my 2003 6.0 Dually did.