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Terry & Mariellen, you are going to dearly love the way your Ford tows that 3295RK. You can see by our signature our setup is very close to yours. Plus, as fulltimers we are very heavily loaded. Our prior tow vehicle was an '03 F350 supercab shortbed with the 6.0 powerstroke and it was awesome at towing also. The only thing you didn't mention that I'd recommend is that with a shortbed you'll need a slider hitch. If you already have a hitch, it can probably be adapted to a slider, as ours was. If you do not have the hitch yet, you have two choices, manual or automatic slider. If I were doing it again I would get the automatic slider, the Pullrite SuperGlide. That one does all the sliding automatically. You just drive. We have the manual slider which is a whole bunch cheaper but requires I manually move the lever and slide the hitch back. It works but is not as elegant as the superglide. That said, in towing fifthwheels with shortbed Fords since 1996 I have only needed the slider four times. But when you need it, you will be glad you have it. The purpose of the slider is to allow you to make the extra tight turn without crashing truck cab and Montana together.
Good luck. I think you made some excellent choices.
Mileage. Almost missed that part of your question. Our '05 now has 11k miles on it. This past week we ventured away from Savannah for some sightseeing and I had opportunity to check mileage running solo. Keep in mind the truck won't peak on its mileage until around 30k or so miles.
What I did is set the cruise, reset the trip computer, then let it run 10 to 20 miles to let the mileage figures settle in. This was relatively flat roads with just a few hills. Also, this mileage is pure highway, no starts and stops, no city. We started with a full tank and two people onboard plus a full toolbox. Also, this crewcab is going to be roughly 600 to 800 lbs heavier than your supercab.
60 mph = 21.9 mpg
65 mpg = 21.0 mpg
70 mpg = 19.7 mpg
75 mpg = 18.9 mpg
Our solo city mileage has been running about 16.5 mpg. It was less when the truck had fewer miles and when on winter diesel which cuts our mileage about 2 mpg. I want to stress I don't expect to match those highway numbers over a full tank of fuel since those above did not include any cities, no starts, no stops, just pure highway cruising.
Towing. We've only towed about 1250 miles with this truck so far. That was in mostly winter weather and using winter diesel. The truck had 6,800 miles when we started the trip so mileage will improve with more miles and summer diesel. We are towing 13,980 lbs. Mileage on that trip overall was 10.6 mpg. With our '03 F350 with the diesel and automatic but a supercab shortbed, same load including passengers and toolbox we averaged 11.5 mpg towing. I think the new one is a bit better than the old one was at this stage of its life so expect to end up around 11.5 to 12 towing, overall.
Mileage figures can vary widely depending on driving habits, speed, terrain, wind, load, etc., so I'd be interested in hearing what others are getting.
I hope this helps a little. You can relax about your truck doing the job, though. Just be prepared to do a lot of smiling as you tow that Montana down the road.
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