Hello all. I'll try to keep this as short as possible but I want to give you all the important information. The wife and I bought an RV fish house 2 years ago. We have a 3 year old daughter and a big 110lb dog. Since buying the camper, between summer camping and Ice fishing we have gone on roughly 20-30 trips in 2 years. So we found out what we liked and decided to order a custom build house that is bigger and heavier than ours. I am being told by the builder to expect the dry tongue weight to be 1k pounds. Crunching the numbers I've decided I'm not comfortable staying with my 1/2 ton to tow it. The builder says there is no WDH that he knows of that will work with it. So dry weight I'm already maxing out the hitch capacity of the truck. Even if that were not the case with the dry hitch weight and me and the family in the truck I've maxed out my payload already too. Most of our trips are at least 2 hrs one way and some of them are as much as 5 hrs one way. So it's not like I'm only using it a couple times a year.
I've decided to just go with the F350 because here in MN tabs for 1 tons are a flat $120 a year or something like that. So since the F250 and F350 are basically the same price I will save thousands just on tabs over the life of owning it.
I saw that Ford was making the black appearance package available with the XLT trim for 2022 model year so thats what I want to go with. I actually have my local dealer pricing up a truck for me today. Which brings me to my current questions. First thing, I have not been able to actually look at an F350 in person yet. My 2013 F150 I remember that the back seat in the crew cab was huge and the floor was flat. Is that the case in the current super duties? It is a must for us, we need the split bench seat and a flat floor for the daughter and dog.
Second thing is the engine choice. I know the F350 is going to be overkill for our rig. I'm thinking the camper will at most weight 7,500lbs when loaded up but not being able to use a WDH and the tongue weight are the reasons for the upgrade. I already explained the cost of tabs is my reason for jumping right to the 1 ton. I see that in the F350 the 6.2 comes with the 10 speed, and then there is 7.3 upgrade which is $1,700. I really like what I see from the torque curve in the 7.3. I currently have a 1/2 ton diesel because I hated how much my gas engine screamed when towing. MPG is not that important to me, but the truck will be used as a daily driver for half of the year so if there will be a significant difference between the two and the 6.2 is more than enough for my needs I may go that route. If not I think the 7.3 is a no brainer.
Any and all recomendations, advice, etc is much appreciated. Thanks