The wife and I are thinking about trading up to a bigger boat. It would weigh in at about 11,500 lbs on a tripel axle surge brake equipped trailer. Due to that I'm assuming I'm stuck with a non WD bumper pull (right?).

I know I'd have to bolt on an aftermarket 12,000 lb receiver and use a 1 inch shank 2 5/16ths 12,000 lb rated ball.

My truck is a 2006 F-350 PSD long bed supercab with SRW and no mods that woud be an issue for towing (i.e. no driveline, suspension, software, or body work). It does have the factory tow package including the controller, but again its a surge brake trailer so the TBC is meaningless.

Am I going to have to throw on airbags or other mods beyond the receiver to really make this work?

I regularly tow a Jeep on a car hauler with my 350 and a 17,500 pound boat at work with an F-750 so I have some tow experience. My main concern is toungue weight and whether I need to address that with airbags or other suspension supplements.

 

your current reciever is a 12.5K wt distro max reciever. I think only 6K non distributing capacity.

Don't think you would need airbags.

I think you could do it with your current reciever. You would need to see how much weight is actually on the reciever when hitched but I suspect it would come in around 1200 lbs without a distribution setup.

 

My initial thought here is with that much tongue weight, after you make your hitch changes, you might step back and take a look to get a better idea. My guess would be you will want air bags and you will be loading your rear axle in order to get things on an even plane. As always, it would be ideal to know how much weight the rear axle is carrying. Just thinking out loud here.

Steve