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Trailer measurement is bed length -- example - my car hauler has a 18' bed (includes 2' dovetail). A standard car hauling trailer should be wide enough for an F250/F350, but that's no guarantee, of course. Wheel/tire size and offset can be an issue as well.
The problem with a shorter trailer (16' and below) is that while it may be physically long enough to fit an F250/F350, you'll end up with the truck too far forward on the trailer, putting too much weight on the tongue. That happened to me with my 18' car hauler with a 2001 or so F350 crew cab 4x4 with a 7.3 PSD. It fit on the trailer (just barely) but the front tires on my Yukon were barely on the ground because the tongue was way overloaded. I unloaded the truck and got a flatbed to haul it. Couldn't risk it with a 2+ hour tow home.
I hear what you are saying, and you're absolutely right that could be an issue with a short trailer. However that also may be a function of the axle location on the trailer. If the axle is too far back it would be easy to over load the tongue. That also speaks on the tow rating of the vehicle, and whether or not a weight distributing hitch should be used. I don't want to say you overloaded the Yukon with that load, but a weight distributing hitch may have allowed that trailer to work.
Maybe the heavier engine in my truck always kept enough weight on the front tires, but I don't remember having an issue with any of the trucks.
Weight balance on a trailer is a very important topic that most people don't understand. There is a great video on youtube of a toy car with a trailer on a treadmill. The guy moves some washers around the trailer and taps it sideways to show how the weight distribution changes how the trailer sways and if it can self correct. Really neat and I'd look it up, but need to run so I'm not too late for work. The moral here is to be careful how you load your truck and trailer, and adjust as needed. That would be why some tractor trailer units have sliding axles to adjust to the load carried as needed.
There was a time with the same trailer towing my uncles 60 something Jaguar up to Maine. We were using my wifes Tacoma to save one gas (it wasn't a heavy load so didn't need the diesel beast). The engine was out of the Jag, and much of the interior had been disassembled. I think we had the engine way up on the nose of the trailer, and either the weight of it, or the way it was tarped up caused the trailer to sway somewhere around 55 or 60 MPH. Might have been the exercise equipment in the back of the truck too, we never figured out what it was. Steered and handled fine below that, but get too fast and the trucks automatic anti-sway or something would kick in and pump the breaks and make everything weird. Added at least an extra hour to the trip, but we got it there safely.
Here's the load I mentioned above. With a 20' trailer, I think I would have been fine, but with 18', there was too much weight on the tongue, and the front wheels on the Yukon are barely touching the ground.
Here's the load I mentioned above. With a 20' trailer, I think I would have been fine, but with 18', there was too much weight on the tongue, and the front wheels on the Yukon are barely touching the ground.
Do you know what the weight rating for that trailer was? The tires look real close to the wheel wells. Moving that back a foot or so looks like it could have worked, so yah longer trailer.
It doesn't really go into details on how much tongue weight, but shows why you need more up front than in the rear. I've always heard that tongue weight should be about 10% of the trailer weight. This is more of a topic for up in the towing forums, which have lots of threads on the subject, mostly dealing with RV's and all sized trucks and trailers.
One other thing to add, braking is very important. If you don't have trailer brakes and a brake controller, things can get messy real quick! Had an instance where it was easier and faster to use the wife's Tacoma to tow a portable climbing wall a couple miles back home from an event when my truck wasn't available. Never got a actual weight on the portable wall trailer, but went over a scale once when hooked to my '88 and it was 12,500 combined. So it was a bit heavy on the Tacoma, tongue weight seemed ok, and while a little slow to accelerate, it wasn't necessarily worse that an IDI with a huge load. Tacoma brakes were way under powered for that situation. It got a brake controller after that, and never towed the portable wall again either.
Coming back 100 miles with a truck on a trailer, I'd make damn sure it had trailer brakes and a brake controller that were properly setup. A quick tap of the brake controller often kills trailer sway instantly, like if a big rig goes by or a sudden gust of wind.
My trailer has 3,500# axles, so it's rated for 7,000 pounds. However, it weighs about 2,000 pounds, so that leaves 5,000 pounds for the F350. The '99 F350 crew cab long bed diesel 4x4 weighs right around 6,000 lbs, so I was overloaded by about 1,000 pounds already. As I mentioned above, it was too sketchy for me so I unloaded it. With a longer trailer, I could have gotten the weight distribution fixed and it would have been much less sketchy.
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