Truck Hacks, Tips, & Tricks for Towing Your RV

what's up fellow journeyers so for today's video we're going to be showing you our mean clean lifted truck that we use for full-time RV living no no it's actually U it's actually Stewart's truck our truck's over here okay I literally don't know what this is it looks like I'm might have to have my daughter clean this up yeah so uh this is our truck and if you still have any respect left for me whatsoever after the intro um hopefully you'll see that no this is not as meticulously um taken care of as steuart truck over here behind me or probably any real man's truck but as we showed with grilling I'm probably not a real man I'm so naive this is amazing I used to be like you I used to be like you now you're a real man and I don't take care of my truck as well as I should but that's just it just is what it is okay when you travel full-time when you have a truck that's been through the ringer uh we bought this in 2018 I like it that's a big truck it is a big truck so this video we're we're going to answer all the truck questions because if you're going to RV if you're going to tow anything the truck you get is a huge part of that you don't want to mess that up cuz a truck can be a lot of money we're going to answer uh whether or not we regret our decision as far as the truck we bought we'll talk about Dy versus single rear wheel we'll talk about mega cab or short bed versus long bed we're going to talk about gear gadgets all the thing we have in our cab that make our Drive days just a little bit easier everything this video is going to be packed so we're going to take you along on a travel day with the truck and our travel day actually starts the day before very often so when we can what we can we're loading it up in the truck beforehand this is our uh food SL snack bag now just for context we have a 9-year-old and a 4-year-old there's no shortage of things we use to protect the seats I have a seat protector underneath this seat I've actually ended up putting seat protectors on the front two seats on the bottom at least I'll linked all this these have been okay you know um they work but they move around they slide off like most of the seat protectors I've got one of these on each side I have L these so we got husky liners you know these are all around the truck in the two spot spot in the front and then we have a liner that goes like all the way across the back and yeah if you got kids dogs Extra Protection is definitely a good thing so the day before we leave I fuel up the truck all the way so I went and I topped off this tank this truck comes stocked I think a 30 gallon 32 gallons I was like C that's not enough that's not great so I went and got an extended fuel tank this is an extra I think 42 45 gallons of fuel in here and then also to prep for the next day I have a uh a tire Miner TPMS I'll turn it on the day before so they can go ahead and just start checking all the tire pressure for all the tires and they're all looking good but if the tires have been low I've been very happy with this I've got no hoses no cords you set it to the PSI you want and then you just forget it when you back up your sensor may or may not always detect your Kingpin so you got to yeah you got to watch for that also prep wise I have a water bottle but on travel days it's really nice I just have these already sitting here if I need them and then I always keep I like my Prime I keep that here and then I keep a Celsius I don't live by caffeine or live by the Celsius or anything like that but if if I'm tired it's definitely safer for me to drink that and wake back up all right so we're fueled up aired up time to get some sleep we see you guys in the [Music] morning here you go to Georgia okay can I see your cow just tried to put it down but uh did a cow lick your head last night yeah any cows lick your head no no all right packing have to leave and hook up with the truck check this out if you have an action camera of any sort they can show what you see on the action camera on a mobile device most of the newer ones should work okay with the range then I connect Action Four and that's what I see on my action four and boom I've got a hitching up backup camera that I could actually move or place anywhere I need to so for us this is very important because we have this slider hitch and this hitch painted my side but it's a necessity for the short bed but if it's turned too much to the side it is an absolute pain to Hitch up and we have these rails on the side too if you see these rails we've got to come in at a very precise angle so having a camera has been a huge help anywhere you want want to put a mount slap it on there hook it up to your screen then boom good to go all right let's get hooked [Music] up we have used a lot of different forms of navigation Google Maps Apple Maps Garmin GPS trucker apps RV trip wizard I've used all the above and I've used all the above in multiple times over the last nine years and what I've learned is they all make mistakes none of them are perfect you still have to use common sense and it's still a very very very good idea to look at throughout beforehand and know where you're going because we're in a situation frequently where Marissa needs to go to the back to help the kids or she's doing homeschool and so I don't have a physical Navigator up here very much so it's up to me if there's like a ton of red and the route changes because of something what I've learned is Google Maps has been the absolute best for upto-date information so if I'm going to have to like pre-plan my routes and look at everything ahead of time and make sure everything's okay and pretty much know the route anyway anyways like I'm just going to use Google Maps the exception is if we're in the northeast or somewhere with tons of bridges and things that we made you know pretty sketch area with a tall rig like I will sometimes have a second navigation up that shows those areas but still I don't fully trust it I'm checking beforehand for those things this could end up being interesting because we've got this funky angle going on where the rigs like sloping to the side we've got this poll I got to watch out for my biggest fear we pull out here is I don't want to come in too sharp of an angle and then the Kingpin ends up hitting the side of the truck so we're going to film it see what happens I'm about to leave I look at my TPMS and my front R Tires it says 40 so we're going to double check that oh wow it is 40 oh my goodness so while that's going I'm going to look and see if I see any tires are obviously in good condition I don't see anything I'll pull up in a minute okay we're back up pressure I put my ear I turn this off and put my ear down put your ear down it's a tiny little HS coming from this valve stem so here's what's going on two things number one the tire Miner last night apparently did not update to the actual settings it was still sitting on the settings from when last time it turned off I don't know why it took us so long to update this morning I left it on a little longer and it updated so leave it on for a while second thing this isn't real well known but it needs to be known these tps's if it's on a non steel valve stem it'll have so much flexibility in the stem that eventually you'll have a leak steuart had happened to like three of his in Baja last year so count them on me you got to watch out for that cuz that's what's going on we're going to go down the road a couple hours and I'll probably recheck it and see where we're at just one more thing to keep track of today we're watching for two things we're watching for the see how the RV is kind of leaning this way on a lot while Lan and watching make sure doesn't lean too much and hit that rail right there and then after I start pulling out we want to watch the tail whip and make sure it doesn't whip into this pole got it it's a lot of pressure you're good P make us fresh bread for the road we're going to eat this whole loaf of bread all right just like that we're only 2 hours late and we're off we got a I don't know 6 to 7 hour day today so when you see the shorts showing how awesome and epic this is it is but it's a lot of work so if you spend any significant time and Florida the East Coast especially we're getting onto a toll road here in Florida which there is a lot of one of the things we have in our truck is called a uni I think or might be uni I don't know but it's a Toll Road pass but it's cool because it like applies to not just the sun pass but also a lot of the other passes either this pass is going to cover us or they're just going to grab the plates and use that and then we bought our pass I think you can just get it on Amazon you can buy in gas stations like in the state you're into but uh yeah we'll literally link to it below along with all the stuff we'll talk about one of the things we have to keep around is travel John travel Johns they had actually come in handy lots of times we've used these before if we're in a national park and the bathroom line is forever long that happened to us in Yellowstone like literally the line was probably 45 minutes long and we just Just Whipped one of these out so it's got an absorbent um material in the bottom you peeing these then it turns to like a gel and so then you can toss it these come in really handy for emergency situations you can eat too fast you'll get a brain freeze yeah eat too fast you get a brain freeze won't you buddy one thing to keep in mind when you're looking at trucks now we also did this with our van when we took with the Airstream I wanted a 12 passenger van not a 15 passenger van because usually the shorter the vehicle the better the turn radius so we have got a a Dodge 3500 mega cab which has some other perks too but the big thing and one of the reasons I bought this was because of the short bed it's like 6' 3 and it has a very short wheelbase so my knowledge other than maybe like an F450 or something like that this is going to have the best turn radius of any truck you're going to get even more better than the you know typically the short bed and another perk of the mega cab do you get this extra storage in the back when we first got this we'd keep the stroller back there and the stroller was so large I was like I don't know where to put this thing but it folded up and F perfect Al behind the seat so if you got something very large that you always want to keep inside the truck mega cab might be for you these seats if there's nothing behind you can actually recline these seats and it's a very comfortable ride in the back if you had adults hey buddy how's that ice cream good cold though it's cold though probably the biggest Pro honestly the mega cab can back into a normal spot even if there's no overhang I'm not saying it's as Nimble as ikia or something like that but it's definitely more Nimble than a long bed truck would be so those are all the pros however there are definitely some cons of a short bed pickup truck or especially the mega cab and case was what I just talked about with his hitch takes up pretty much the whole bed this massive 300 and something pound hitch in the truck bed I cannot store much in the back of this bed versus what I would do with a long bed if I had one get some sort of a gooseball hitch and so what those will do Rees makes one gen ju makes one you get your entire truck bed back because it's just a gooseball it just comes down on the gooseball in the middle here you don't have this massive hitch taking up all this space and then if you get like a turnover ball or something like that then you can literally get your whole truck bed back but it's a long bed you know you lose the turn radius if you don't have an F450 and it's longer all the things I talked about you lose all that with a long bit so riding in the truck is usually pretty smooth except when you're trying to write so I apologize to um all of our new team Journey members who are getting our handwritten welcome letters this week because uh it's a little scribbly so team journey is all about living a life of less junk more Journey it's such a great place to connect and ask questions um meet new friends it has made my heart so happy to see everyone connecting in there building friendships even meeting up in person and camping together we do live chats uh Nathan and I with with Team Journey we host our office hours where you can come in Zoom with us and ask us all your questions one on-one we share our travel Maps it's just such an incredible Community we love you guys if you want to be a part part of that Community head over to team journey.com and hopefully you won't get a scribbly welcome later but if you do know that it was part of the journey so we made it to one of our favorite haror hosts Lane Southern Orchards and uh this is usually the spot we get we love this view you just open the front door you get this view sunset's over here it's rising over here in the morning uh we're going to show the outside features of the truck these are the TPMS I checked the pressure on this and we stopped to eat a Chick-fil-A and had gone down was one PSI less than the other side but then again that could have just been one PSI definitely checking this again in the morning before we go as far as the truck things we've changed things we've done one of the biggest most obvious Beyond The Hitch is this toolbox I installed this myself and if you know me like if it was installed by me it's not that difficult to install it's may be hard to see it but there's a uh a drip feed down here and turn it off and on right there and it gravity feeds the diesel into the tank at first I was turning it off and on literally I just left it on and then I always put fuel to the top and it just makes it way down and we're good to go it's worked perfectly I don't have like a secondary pump I have to worry about going in and out and all that stuff we always keep a 5 gallon canister of gas unfortunately cuz we've got a gas generator I always keep extra oil coolant with me so like anything I need to get to fast is in there um see if I can get this down I can get that down this is mainly stuff that I access Gorilla Tape headlamp meas oh my goodness these are epic in an RV I'm always like needing to reach small tight spaces and this tiny little curve on the end you know I've got more tools than this there's tools underneath the RV there's tools in the toolbox but these are the ones I find myself accessing the most often we keep a propane tank in the back this is mainly for the uh propane fire pit we've got basically just all the dirty nasty stuff a lot of that's back here inside the toolbox of course there's our DeWalt pump over there this is like a just a random camera bag with knickknacks for camera gear this is also random camera gear here now ironically I've only been broken into one time since we've been rving or actually maybe in my life we were at a charity event in Nashville to help raise money with a nonprofit called Flint Global which which is basically teach teaching people how to get out of poverty while the truck was parked in the parking lot and we walked into the charity they broke in and they stole some of my stuff in the toolbox which is I guess another way to try to get out of poverty I don't know so this does not have everything that was originally in here like I did have a lot of wrenches sockets all that kind of thing so I've started to kind of build that back I keep my Jack back here I've got a brush for if I ever do wash the rig or the truck Stuart watches this video it's pretty bad so um yeah we we need a very good washing all around on basically everything I own right now let's not forget that in the back of the truck I pretty much always keep these Nemo pads they are super awesome for getting on the ground underneath the truck the RV stuff like that and we still do use the pads when we bought this truck I didn't think to check with the dealer whether or not the suspension had been just stolen out of the truck so they basically yanked the air suspension out here had airbags and a compressor and all the stuff already in this truck uh from the factory but they pulled it all out and when I bought it it was all gone so when I got it the leaf springs couldn't support a load of something like a fifth wheel we ended up adding two more beefy leaf springs in here and then these so I added timin and as well it works the truck works it rides well it rides level and it gets us from point A to point B so now as far as gadgets inside the truck what I found is it's actually tricky in the truck to find a power outlet that's always live yes I could rewire something and do something like that but I found another solution that if you have the same problem this may be great for you so we've got like our tire minder which is again not wired right now and so I need to charge this if I plug it into like a standard USB outlet here um it would not charge over night however I have this USB outlet sitting right here and it is ran underneath here to one of these battery Banks so what happens is when the truck does turn on the battery Bank gets recharged but then if I turn the truck off I've got enough juice in this to charge like maybe an iPhone a couple times it'll easily charge you know this tire minder overnight so when I come back this will be charged up it's not relying on the truck being off or on and I'll link to this you know they're like I don't know $ 30-ish on Amazon so three things we keep in the truck is sort of like a just in case kind of thing is our firstus our first aid kit in our crate here second we keep a heavyduty tire repair kit in the truck and then third is our NOCO booster uh which is meant for heavy duty trucks and can crank up this truck and probably almost any vehicle with no issues whatsoever if the battery is uh low or dead I love magnets this magnet is usually my phone goes right here and I can control things with that if I need to I have a magnet right here that I use for my iPad Mini that I use for navigation we have a magnet up here that I'll put like a GoPro or anything I to snap here camera wise I'll snap on that and I get a front shot or if I want to this is on the magnet right now I can get like a straight shot of everybody in the truck at once I've got another magnet up here in the top Corner my GoPro action 4 whatever I'm using I can snap that up in this little spot up here and then I've got this beefier Mount that's screwed in which is what I use for our A7 F3 it'll slide into the Arca Swiss I can tighten it right here and then I can rotate it this controls the tension as far as rotating so I can rotate it side to side but that's where our big camera sits [Music] it's not really going down at all that's good let me back to [Music] [Music] Tennessee do y'all want to go in and get breakfast welcome to Bookies I we could have went another 3 400 miles what I had on the tank it was going to be close getting back to Tennessee and I was like I'm not even going to cut close we went ahead and top this tank back off as far as mileage I restarted it when we started here and we're getting I think we're at 10.9 per gallons when we're getting on mileage pretty wild we could go from Orlando to Middle Tennessee and like not have to stop for fuel but we did it's bies like you got to stop they got 50 million signs like you just you don't have a choice you like have to stop okay time to settle the debate once for all D versus single rear wheel now in our case it's pretty much a no-brainer I mean we're like I don't know 17 175 loaded this could be up to 18 185 gross so you get in that range to me it's like you're duy so we're duly like there's single rear wheels that can like handle a lot of weight as far as the width of this vehicle like you'll read all you can't get through the banks you can't do the drive-throughs I mean yeah you got to use some common sense and some of stuff but the personally for me it's more about the length of the truck than it is the width of the truck the width has not been that big of a deal yeah so like here's our Cargo in this 5,259 lbs I mean I get it some of your single re wheels are getting better and they can hold more weight but your bottleneck on a truck is not what it can tow doesn't matter really I mean really I mean yeah you need some braking and stuff like that it's it's about the cargo that's usually going to be your bottleneck uh to where you see these trailers that are like bending the truck down and then you get all the sway and then that's when it gets really dangerous when you got a dual and you're towing and let's say the wind gust or SEMA goes by you or you have to Swerve to get to miss something on the road and then you can feel that trailer thinking about doing something in the back the DU like it just keeps going and says no get back in line and the trailer gets back in line the single rear wheel like sometimes it'll kind of move with the trailer a bit it's definitely a more stable Pleasant Towing experience with the DU like no question these things are just wild only in America man look what I got Daddy a Brisk Taco brisket Taco you found something yet buddy he wants just faking on a biscuit they get me with the smell every time what is that that's Daddy's pecans they're yummy look at all this sugar buddy wow you got fast high quality and affordable but it's really hard to get all three so this is I'm going to say fast and pretty good quality but uh how much was that almost 30 bucks for PR this next Gadget is something we didn't have on our first several RVs that is our backup camera you know obviously as the name implies it's good for backing up two big perks that are just as good if not better than that when you're driving first is I can keep an eye on our ebikes in the back and make sure they're still there and they're not like scraping on the ground or bouncing more than they should that kind of thing and probably the thing I love the most about it is if I'm changing lanes or passing someone I can tell when to get over I mean yeah I use my my mirrors I use common sense but it's still nice to see that to be able to double check where somebody's at make sure somebody's not swerving over real quick or anything like that and so we've got a screen here in the truck that shows our backup camera so one topic it's a little bit of a debate when it comes to a truck is do I buy my truck first or the RV first I the chicken or the EG a lot of times it's like you think you know what you want when you are going to get an RV but then you might tour something else and then you really love it and then you can't because the truck you just bought can't do we have seen that happen multiple times we're doing two Mount passes today and we go from Georgia to Middle Tennessee one of them I think is called signal one's called Lookout pretty legit like 5 to 8% grades So when you buy a truck you get to pick the gear ratio and that has a lot to do with how you get up and down the mountains how you accelerate so because I want to have a better everyday driver I did a lower gear ratio of like 373 with ram which is good for everyday driving you get better mileage and it's plenty of torque once you start Towing it's like oh I got to load behind me it it has a hard time sometimes on the on-ramps barely faster than the semis maybe so it's like that awkward speed going up stuff sometimes I think in hindsight I would have done the 410 ratio which would have gotten slightly worse gas mileage but would have given me the torque I'd rather have we still get up the mountains and as far as mountain is driving one other big thing like I love love love the exhaust brake on this like no issue stopping I mean I have hydraulic brakes on the trailer too exhaust on this like if you're back and forth on a truck and you know that's one thing you're going to get usually with the diesel trucks it's exhaust brake it helps so much especially you have a heavy RB behind so we made it back it's our home base in Tennessee we just left 80° in sunny weather in Florida to be here yeah it's a little bit different thank you truck though we did get back again we were not the first ones up the mountain but we made it up the mountains oh my goodness this so cold [Music] why why why this is my why my back at Tennessee face we love Tennessee but if you could buy any truck to replace this one what would it have that this one doesn't have or what would you do differently probably pick like a Jeep Gladiator no that's not a truck any truck I want what are some features it has to be pretty this is my this is my life well I will share one that I think I think Marissa would like to have more um leg room in the back massagers apparently massagers have you not ridden in one of the newer trucks that has like massage in the seat I haven't glorious massagers okay she wants something pretty that massages you yeah don't we all as far as power and duy I'm not super picky on the brand even you know I if that's heresy or not cuz they're all like super beefy trucks that do almost anything you want nowadays if you get something like in the last couple of years the big thing I'm going back and forth about is do I get along bed or do we stay with a short bed that's for us know I personally love driving the short bed better because it's easier for me to drive I think I would lean toward long bed really so if a mega cab duy just fell in my lap for the right price it was the right features I'm not saying I wouldn't do it and I'm not saying I regret what we bought it's been good for me I haven't driven a lot of long beds around town but I would have to imagine it's easier to drive around town with the turn radius and backing feel so many times you're saying I'm really glad I have a short bed right about true I do so if you enjoyed seeing all the different gear and gadgets we use with our truck uh we have also put together a list of our top 20 items that we recommend when it comes to full-time RV living these are things we go out and we buy almost first thing anytime we change an RV or we're going somewhere so Nathan put some of his favorites and I put some of my favorites so it's a really great list with easy to use links for you to check out for your journey so if you want to check that out you can download it for free at ljm journey.com slop2 items heast you're wondering why we're in the cold of Tennessee that's coming up in the next couple of videos I'll give you a hint we might be going somewhere soon can you guess well that's the journey for this week until next week we'll catch you guys later

Channel: Less Junk, More Journey

Views: 51,983

Keywords: full time rv, rv, rv living, rving, hensley and jj, how to rv, camping, camper, full time rving, rv life, rving with kids, travel vlog, 5th wheel, fifth wheel, less junk more journey, less junk more travel, best rv youtube channel, rv living with kids, rv towing tips, rv tow vehicle, dually vs single rear wheel towing, rv gadgets and accessories, rv gadgets you must have, rv travel day, best rv navigation system, RV towing, tire pressure monitoring system, dodge mega cab

Id: 2_3ihHL-HBA

Length: 23min 17sec (1397 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 18 2024