Jammer said:
I pull my 30' RV all over the place with my gasoline powered Chevy Suburban and am enjoying lower total cost of ownership, better fuel availability, more predictable engine maintenance, and more power than most diesels. You couldn't pay me enough to switch to a diesel.
So? Look at my signature line and you will find a Ford Bronco -- there are/were no diesel Broncos . My experience is with gassers, I have never owned a diesel.
Fuel availability? Maybe a few decades ago, but in recent years almost every filling station seems to have a green pump dispensing diesel -- even in urban areas.
Power? I suspect engine size has something to do with that. There are marine diesels that are the size of a small house. Mercedes stuffs a 4 cylinder 3.0L diesel into a sedan and has done so for almost a century. For towing, torque curve characteristics are important also. Diesel curves tend to favor load pulling as witness the complete dominance of diesel engines in long haul trucking.
My admiration of the diesel is its performance at high altitudes. I live in the US Southwest. I have towed in every western state except Alaska and oddly enough, Wyoming. Western towing is fundamentally different than Eastern. The average elevation of the west is around 3500 feet above sea level. The huge Colorado Plateau stands some 7000 feet above sea level. The elevation of Flagstaff, AZ is 6,910 ft. -- which is a bit higher than the summit of Mt. Michell in N. Carolina at 6,684 ft, the highest mountain east of the Mississippi. Flagstaff sits on a plain, not on a mountain top.
Normally aspirated engines (those not turbo- or super-charged) lose 3% of their rated HP for every 1000 feet of altitude. All diesels manufactured in the past few decades have been turbocharged. Gasoline engines, until the Ford EcoBoost introduced in 2009, are normally aspirated. Thus a gas engine running along the main street of Flagstaff is operating with only 79% of its rated HP. Trust me on this: on that main street this is not a big deal. Schlepping a trailer over the passes in Utah, California, Idaho, Montana, Colorado or Arizona you feel it -- especially with a head wind. My Bronc has put in a lot of miles in 2nd and 1st gear dragging the trailer over things like Syskiou, Donner, and Lookout passes and those are just the Interstate passes. This is the reason that I strongly recommend that vehicles with unblown gasoline engines be downrated by 20% for operation out here in the West.
Diesels have a real point out here in the West. Now so do the Ford EcoBoost gassers.
One of the myriad problems with these discussions is that posters like you are confusing the question of "What RV can I start out with given this tow vehicle" with the question "I have this RV and it's time to buy a tow vehicle. Which one should I get?" They are different, and to provide an answer that is actually helpful you have to put yourself in the shoes of the person asking the question.
Huh?! I thought we were doing exactly that. A novice comes in with a truck looking for a trailer, we try to give him a trailer weight which the GVWR of the trailer should not exceed. If the novice has a trailer looking for the truck to tow it, we give him a tow rating which his truck should equal or exceed. If they comes in looking for both truck and trailer, we generally tell them to find a trailer floor plan that makes them happy and then buy a tow vehicle with a tow rating that will pull its. We try to give them a simple, conservative number to work with as they sort out the problems of floorplan, price, and their particular uses.
Second of all, I believe that manufacturers stated towing capacity is not based on safety but is a marketing number used to drive sales of more expensive power trains.
Unfortunately, conspiracy theories make for poor operational considerations. Are we to believe that They are boosting numbers to move total units, or are They reducing numbers to move people to more expensive units...hmm? Myself, I evaluate conspiracies on the Rat Theory: Sooner or later someone will rat out the conspiracy and Drudge or Huffington post will scream it to the rafters. Until then I assume that the information being published is as accurate as the folks coming up with the numbers can make it. Adding a might of safety factor helps in this.
Thus I am conservative in my recommendations here. I also lay out my reasoning so folks can follow it and decide for themselves as to whether I am being reasonable or just blowing smoke. Hell, I am just another schmo on the internet, take me for whatever my reasoning is worth. If you have a different way to go, so be it