My truck is an 04 F250 SD gas 5.4l. Towing my 19 3/4 ft travel trailer I am getting about 5.5mpg. Running 285/75/16 toyo mt tires. Truck has about 163k on it. I am driving with OD off the entire time the trailer us hooked up. Cruising at 65-70mph. I have not done plugs since I bought the truck 12k miles ago. And the air filter is due for a change. Is this normal for mpg on a trailer this small? It just seems a bit low. I was expecting 9-11mpg but not this low. Unhooked the truck avgs between 12.9-15.5mpg depending on cruising speeds and distance.

 

That does seem low. I get 7-8 towing my dad's 30 footer.... I have 35s.

 

Just checked my air filter. Dusty as hell... I pulled it out the wind is blowing and it has a dust trail. But not sure that is my cause. Maybe needs new plugs. How easy is it to do plugs on this truck?

 

Normal considering you are running either side of 3K rpms the whole time. Need to let it go into OD as long as it doesn't search too bad.

 

agreed...let it go in OD...either that or slow down

 

While your mileage is low it's not necessarily indicative of a problem. A new air filter will certainly help if yours is as bad as you say it is, but the other thing to do would be slow down. The faster you go the less efficient you will be, and that's why I like to cruise around 62 with a trailer.

Towing this thing home two weeks ago I averaged over 9 with my new to me V10 powered Excursion. This was in overdrive pulling right around 2,000 RPMS at 62 MPH. Had I not had 4.30s this would not have been possible, and I would have been guzzling fuel at ~2,600 with O/D off.



My trailer was empty, and the V-nose makes it a little more aerodynamic, so take my numbers with a grain of salt.

 

yep keeping your speed down certainly helps

 

I towed a 26 ft travel trailer (about 5k lbs.) with my '97 F150 with the 2 valve 5.4 for four summers. If I kept it at 57-60 MPH I would usually get 10-11 MPG. Like others have said, keep the speed down to save gas.

 

It also makes a difference what gears ya have, but it does seem a tad low but not what I'd consider worrisome. My V10 Excursion with 285s gets about 8-10mpgs pulling my 10000# TT, IF I keep her below 70MPH. Any higher and while it pulls OK the mileage drops rapidly.

 

I should have mentioned my gears are 3.73 . And on my trip home I kept the OD on and cruised about 62-65mph and any large hills coming up on me I took it out of OD. So far seems like a big improvement but wont know for sure until I do the math. But my drive earlier today took 1/4 tank and the math ran out to about 5.5mpg. The drive home took 1/8th of a tank. So exactly half of what it took before. So ill see what the math says. It is def time for new plugs and filter though.

 

Headwinds?

I pulled a 30 ft camper a few weeks ago, and got 8 MPG one way, and 23 MPG the other way lol.

It was blowing about 60-70 km/h.... very windy