I recently towed a 21' travel trailer for a friend. Not a real heavy trailer, guessing about 6,000 pounds. And, it was towed with out a W/D hitch. Noticed a lot of rear end sag on my stock 2014 F-150 with the FX-4 package. Is this due to no W/D hitch, or do I need stiffer rear shocks?
Thanks.

 

You should use a weight distributing hitch, and if you will be regularly doing this air bags wouldnt be a bad idea as well.

 

Remember boys and girls, a WD hitch does a lot more than just raise up the rear of your truck.

 

I tow a 28' travel trailer with similar weight with my '13 F150 SCrew. I use an Equal-I-zer 4 point WD hitch with 1000# bars and have little to no sway when towing. I also have air bags in the rear, but do not pressure them up for towing. The WD hitch does its job and the truck sits level when loaded.

 

Reminder: shock absorbers are not weight carriers. There are a few shocks out there with a helper spring; Monroe makes one, but "stiffer shocks" will not help sag per se.

Options for you:
WD hitch for sure (recommended for anything more than 5k pounds anyway)
Add-a-leaf (will decrease your unloaded ride quality)
Air bags (fully adjustable yet somewhat costly)
Roadmaster Active Suspension (bolt on, and once adjusted to your liking it greatly improves the characteristics of the truck...unloaded and loaded)
Hellwig helper spring

 

That's what I'm talking about. get your load moved around until you are happy with the tongue weight, then adjust your WD bars until you are happy with the weight on the steering axle and then, if you really need to, worry about air bags. It's my opinion that they aren't required for most situations that a half-ton truck will encounter if you take care of those first two items.

CAT scales are a great place to make these adjustments. I've preached about it in the past. search the phrase "CAT scale" for several helpful threads.

 

This man knows how to use his equipment

Anything over 5k requires a W/D hitch on a half ton. I wouldn't touch suspension until towing with a properly set up WD hitch. More information can be found here: https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...hitch-wdh.html

 

You don't always need a WD hitch. In some cases if your trailer weight is around 5K and you can move weight around on the trailer and get the tongue weight close to the 10% level you should be fine. In my case it's an open car trailer. It's all in where you place the car when you load it. I load the car on back wards to get that 10% tongue weight and the truck rides great.


I've towed with a Ranger PU, a Suburban, an E250 van, and now a F150. They all handles a 5K load fine if I got the right balance of weight on the trailer.