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How much the truck can pull has nothing whatsoever to do with how much it can haul. There is a difference between carrying and pulling.
The best thing you can do is to load the truck up just as you would for a trip, dogs, cats, wife, kids, coolers, firewood, fuel, snacks... in fact anything you would take with you on a trip while towing a 5'er.
Then go hit a CAT scale, weigh the front axle and the rear axle... look at the sticker on your door post it will have the max limits for both as well as the total gross vehicle weight as registered.
Now look at the sidewalls of your tires and make sure that the max load limit for the tires is sufficient to cover the rear axle load limit.
After all this look at the heaviest pin load that the trailer could put on your truck and decide if its safe for you.
As an example my '12 F250 XL, crew cab with 6.7 diesel, long bed and little else has a registered GVWR of 10,000 lbs, a stickered payload of 2629 lbs .
But with the wife, two beagles, a toolbox and loaded as we would while pulling a trailer has a remaining payload of 2000 lbs. That means that all the crap we carry including all the ancillary crap in the console and door pockets along with the wife and the dogs has a combined weight of 600 pounds. This doesn't include a 5'er hitch as I didn't have it yet so add another 150 pounds and now my remaining payload is 1850 pounds.
Ahhhhhh BUT my RAW was only 3000 pounds and my max allowed rear axle load is 6000 lbs, sooooo.... maybe I could carry up to an additional 3000 pounds in the back... YEP you can if you want to ignore the law and carry over max on the whole vehicle.
See.... all them numbers are just that numbers. Go over any of them and the possibility of bad things happening start to increase, sometimes exponentially.
I will tell you that I am fully aware that my '12 F250 is no different part to part from a similarly equipped F350, in fact if you check the Ford parts manual even the spring packs, axles and hubs are the same part number...
They are alike EXCEPT for the badge on the side and that little sticker on the door post. So... my F250 is fully capable of carrying a GVWR of 11,500 lbs, if I were to equip it with the proper tires and wheels.
There is ONE little problem with that.... the law
No matter what I think or know it doesn't make it legal and I've worked too hard and too long accumulating the wherewithal to enjoy my last few years on this earth to want to part with any of it to a state or municipality; just because I was too stubborn or too self absorbed to go buy me a truck that would legally carry the trailer I wanted.
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