Me, my dad, and my girlfriend went from near St. Louis to Virginia Beach to pic up my brothers wrecked car and bring it back home. We travelled I-64 all the way there. The truck is a '96 Z71, 5.7, 4L60E, 3.73 gears, factory transmission and engine oil coolers pulling a 16' utility trailer with NO brakes. Our gross weight was 11,520 pounds. The truck did real well through the mountains. I set my cruise on 70 and left it in OD for most of the trip and it would downshift on the steep grades but never fell under 60 MPH, and never downshifted on small grades or flat ground. I kept it pulled down in third gear where I-64 and I-77 run together tough. It was cool to visit my bro, he is in th Navy and lives in Va Beach. He works on F18's and took us on base so we could see his shop where he works and we got to walk out on the air field where all the jets park at. It was cool. And the wannabe tow rig:
Glad you made the trip ok, get some trailer brakes though. 9 times out of 10 with a load like that you can stop ok, but its that one time that a jackass pulls out in front of you and you smoke the brakes, jacknife the rig, and wish you had those brakes on the trailer. Glad to hear you made it back ok though.
That is plenty of tow rig for that load. My dad's '98 Burb with an identical drivetrain pulls our 27' snowmobile trailer weighing in at 7K just fine. The only thing different is with a trailer as long and as tall (fully enclosed) he got a little sway above 60mph, helper springs fixed that. Those '96 and later 1/2 pickups tow fairly well.
