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Highland ridge light10/30/2023 ![]() If you've been looking to upgrade your RV to a unit with more space and convenient features, choose this travel trailer and you can't go wrong. At the end of the day, I may have chosen the F-150 anyway, but I would feel more comfortable right now, had I really researched and test drove the F-150 and F-250 and bought one of them AFTER I had bought the 33' trailer.Highland Ridge Open Range Light travel trailer LT275RLS highlights: That said, I’m confident that I can manage not overloading our F-150, although it is something I need to be always mindful of. ![]() It is a more powerful tow vehicle, but the gas mileage is a hit to the wallet. Ford does not publish fuel mileage specifications for the F-250 or higher models, but as I understand it, gas mileage is significantly lower in the F-250, hitched or unhitched. I get 17-18 MPG commuting to work in the F-150 and 7-9 MPG towing the trailer. Nevertheless, there are tradeoffs here as well. I may have gone with an F-250 had I realized we were going to consider longer, heavier trailers. What does this have to do with the F-150? It means I have less power margin to play with. The trailer's GVWR is 8000 lbs, but as I’ve added more accessories to the trailer and the truck, I’m getting up there in tow and load weight. It has a slide out on each side and a kitchen island and two air conditioners. The trailer that we eventually bought that day was a Highland Ridge Light that is 33’ long. We spent a lot of time in the final four choices on the second day. I think we looked at 25 trailers the first day and narrowed that down to the final four (it was not pro basketball season). The spreadsheet was really helpful to us in making feature and quality tradeoffs. I modified it to compare trailer features by removing Don's RV features that didn't apply to us and added trailer features that did apply to our situation. The spreadsheet, which I got from my friend, Don, was used to compare RV features. Linked is a spreadsheet that I used to compare features. In 2018, we were attending an RV show in Pomona, California when we saw a layout we really liked. There is not a lot of living space to move around in if you were stuck inside during inclement weather or if you have old and creaky joints like mine that need movement. Inside these smaller trailers, one whole side of the bed is against the wall so whomever is sleeping against that wall has to climb over the other person to get to the bathroom in the middle of the night. At one time, I remember we were looking at trailers that can go off-road because we thought our 2002 Jeep Liberty 4X4 would be our tow vehicle. There are myriads of different things you discover that you cannot accept if you don't have to when you really think about being on the road. After touring many 29' trailers and not being satisfied, one of our friends suggested we think about how long we would be on the road continuously, and don’t get a smaller trailer than we could live in for that length of time. I’m saying that if you are larger than 29’, you have fewer national parks to camp within and those with camping have fewer spots where you’ll fit. In researching national park information, 29’ seems to be the maximum length allowed for trailers in most of the national parks. The reason we didn’t is because we bought the tow vehicle when we were "absolutely sure" we would be buying a 29’ trailer. If I had to do it over again, I should have waited until after I bought the trailer before buying the tow vehicle. At the time, we were looking at trailer lengths of 29’ which would easily be under that towing limit. The specs for the F-150 Lariat state that the vehicle will tow 13,500 lbs.
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