Do the math on your GCVWR and your max payload. If you do the math on the truck and trailer combination you will come up with the right rig.
If you buy a dually you will have to live with it. A good suspension will handle a large slide-in in a SRW. The expense and inconvenience of a dually is not worth the occasional need for the extra stability you may need in a cross wind. If you are on terrain that causes you concern about tipping over a dually won't help you much and anyway you will probably get stuck in the mud with the dually long before you need it for anything else. Duallys are notorious for getting stuck in the slightest mud hole. 4X4 is a better use of money.
Stay away from things like gooseneck adaptors, those are for people that already tow goosenecks and want to use existing hitches to tow travel trailers. Gooseneck adaptors are going to prove to be an oddball if you use one, look closely at the construction, there is just too much welding and complication in the adaptor near the most critical joints. They just look unreliable. I have seen them and they are never quite right. There is one benefit to them though and that is the degrees of roll, and pitch, but once again the need is so rare that the benefit certainly does not offset the potential problems created by the purchase and use of it. Put your money into a shock absorbing pin box or hitch, that is a useful purchase. I use a trailer saver hitch. They are pricy but I found one the other day for $1500 on Craigslist. It will eliminate most chucking on 5th wheels. The benefit of the trailer saver is that it stays with the truck rather than giving up an expensive shock absorbing pin box when you trade your trailer (if you keep the pin box it may not fit your new trailer). If using a class V hitch be sure to use the best stabilizer/load distribution system.
I believe a good set of load levelers are always useful especially in a 3/4 ton but 1 tons can use them too, duallys not so much. The Airlift load leveler airbags have 2 separate inflater valves. They are independent so air from one bag does not collapse the one on the outside of a turn. The airbag on the outside always supports the load. Improper installation of airbags only make a car have a good rake, to be useful the airbags must have independent inflators. I see travel trailers being towed by Suburbans. The load distribution bars still allow the truck and trailer to sag at the hitch. If they had a load leveler airbag system the load distribution bars would be more effective. I don't like class v hitches because I think they are accidents waiting to happen. They don't take wind very well, infact many fivers don't do wind very well but class v towing is the worst. Those yellow signs that say strong wind currents ahead are speaking to those with class v hitches. They are a warning to fivers as well. Best thing to do is pull over and put up the TV antenna or put in a video when you have wind currents that bad.
I hope you can get what you want and make it your own, but the best advice is to always do the math. I speak from experience in that I took a guess and missed and now I have to accommodate my rig rather than my rig accommodating me, its not bad but it could be perfect.
As far as the truck is concerned you will not have problems finding diesel, if you want diesel you need to choose carefully which one. I recommend the diesel blogs and youtube to help out here.
I like the exhaust brake but don't confuse it with Jake brake, they are not the same. A well adjusted and functioning trailer brake system is the most important thing. The exhaust brake is nice so you dont have to use hardly any braking to slow your truck and trailer. My 2013 RAM will slow me down with little brake application, but when I need them they are there.
As far a comfort is concerned any fifth wheel will provide a payload large enough to soften the ride of stiff springs. But airbags can do that too. Unloaded I keep about 10 psi in the bags and it smooths out the ride. When loaded I inflate to about 25 psi to level the load, With my pin load the ride is completely smooth. But the hitch stops the chucking. Chucking is impossible to stop completely. Roads and bridges that have concrete joints at regular intervals will develop a harmonic in the whole suspension and air ride pin boxes or trailer saver type hitches that cause you to lope along and it can cause a different kind of chucking that is annoying and not very controllable. This is a physics problem not a hitch problem. Normal chucking caused by poor roads and imperfections is completely controllable and trailer saver and air ride hitches will save stress on your rig. If you could see how much action is going on back there you would believe me, I think "trailer saver" has a video on youtube.
The upshot is that question one and two are not true. Number 2 is not true because if you are experiencing that then you are not descending correctly. But an exhaust brake would be useful in this decent.
Answer to question 3 is no! I originally thought you were talking about using a gooseneck adaptor to tow a fifth wheel, but now I see that you are comparing them, the answer is no, but the gooseneck will roll and pitch more than a fifth wheel.
4, I have not taken that trip but why do you think that diesel is hard to find, there are all kinds of diesels being used along the roadway you are considering, diesel for transportation, agriculture and travel. Use the internet to plan your trip I think you will find diesel plentiful.
5, Where do you get a gooseneck travel trailer? Better rethink it cause that thing will be jerking and chucking you all the way. But hey I have never pulled a gooseneck travel trailer, but I have pulled a horse trailer with a gooseneck and I know it is a job after a couple of hundred miles of that chucking.
Good luck in your studies, I hope you find something you can live with and that you have a very good experience with your trip to Alaska. Remember do the math.
Going on the Trans Canadian Highway and possibly (hopefully) on up into Alaska.
My wife and I thought we would get a tee-niney camper and use our Explorer as a TV. We even used the "what will tow this camper" feature on various sites, but
when we went to the dealers and actually got inside those campers they weren't at all what we expected. We kept on looking and we just sized and re-sized, and up-sized ourselves right into needing a 250/2500 350/3500. Sooo, I've been looking around, and reading advice, and I've got some questions, based on what a salesman has told me. Budget is limited, everything we get will be used.
Anybody done the TransCanadian Highway? Recommendations for gearing up. (Apart from my trout pole that is
First ... Is it true that for stability and comfort of ride for four adult passengers in a crew cab SRW that you should max out the weight you have when "fully loaded" at 80% of the G
CWR?
Two... Is it true, that with a SRW towing even a medium sized 5th wheel or gooseneck on mountain roads (lookup Bannf) and you hit the steep downhill grades with tight curves you'll wish you had a dually with exhaust brake because the trailer tends to want to "push & roll" the truck, even a 350/3500 with air bag levelers?
Three ... Is there a noticable difference between towing a gooseneck or a 5th wheel? Pros & cons?
Four ... Gas or Deisel? Pros & Cons? I like the dependability of the desiels but what about availability on Trans Canadian Highway? Has anyone done that and found deisel plentiful?
I've about decided that the DWR is the way to go. For now we're looking at shorter 5th or gooseneck for accessability in smaller "hidden out back" campsites, and plan on getting up to a 38 or so footer in the future.
Thoughts.
