Fifth-wheeler versus caravan

While not popular in Australia, the fifth-wheel caravan has a strong following in North America. They are considered the go-to RV when you want motorhome-like interior space with the caravan convenience of being a base station while the tow vehicle roams away from camp.

So why isn’t the fifth-wheeler popular here? Is the caravan’s dominance of the Oz market because it's truly a better towable RV option than a fifth wheeler?

To help answer these questions, we set out on a drive loop with a caravan and a fifth-wheeler, each towed by near-identical Ford Ranger XLT 3.2 autos (both RVs supplied by Sunliner and Willow dealer, Melbourne RV).

These two particular RVs are not anything like direct competitors -- the idea here was to look at the two different RV philosophies and see which works better and why.

Before heading off, we had time to examine the two similar yet very different options.

Built for towing

The fifth-wheeler was a Sunliner Northshore 5N592, an Aussie-built RV with a 2920kg Tare, 3500kg ATM and 600kg tow ball mass at Tare. The body length is 8.3 metres, and it sleeps up to five. It’s a $125,650 proposition.

While Sunliner is looking at introducing a shorter, cheaper fifth wheeler this year, the fact remains that fifth wheelers generally tend to lie at the premium end of the RV market. They're a stepping stone between a luxury caravan and premium motorhome in size and price.

The caravan we used was the Willow Conifer 628X  (not unlike a similar model we reviewed recently), with a Tare of 2340kg, ATM of 2800kg and towball download measured at 200kg. With both 95-litre water tanks full, it weighed 2530kg.

The Willow van has a body length of 23 feet (7.0 metres) and can sleep three. While it's much cheaper than the Sunliner, at $74,762, the Conifer is no povo-pack caravan -- its features included an oven, washing machine, two 100A/h house batteries and two 120-watt solar panels.

Comparing the two

There's plenty of space for a couple inside the Willow, with its fairly conventional layout. It has a north-south island bed up front, dinette and kitchen in the middle and the bathroom up the back.

However, compared with a fifth wheeler, towball download weight is very restricted when towing caravans like the Conifer. Most tow vehicles can tow with a maximum of 350kg TBM, and as anyone who has towed with anything like that towball weight knows, it has a significant effect on dynamics on all but the big, heavy American trucks.

Meanwhile, the fifth-wheeler has a longer body; its 8.3-metre length including the motorhome-like ‘cab-over’ section.  It feels enormous inside when set up, with much more interior room in its front north-south bedroom and ensuite, centre kitchen and slide- out couch, and rear lounge.

The Sunliner’s ‘towball’ weight (the weight imposed on the ute by the fifth wheeler’s pin) is 600kg, so a good amount of the towing ute’s payload is soaked up by the RV.

In this case, the Ranger XLT has a payload of 988kg -- so you have 388kg payload to play with. Sunliner claims that no suspension modifications are needed for the tow vehicle.

As for the caravan, with its 200kg towball download the Ranger XLT towing it had 688kg payload remaining.

Hitch costs

The Ranger XLT has a towbar fitted as standard, but even if you need to fit one you’re looking at no more than $750  for most utes. For a fifth-wheeler, you’ll pay around $2500-$3000 for a tray-mounted hitch, plus fitting.

Keeping within Gross Combination Mass is the key with the large, heavy fifth-wheeler. The Ranger’s kerb weight is 2230kg and GCM is 6000kg, leaving 3770kg for any payload and towing load. If the fifth wheeler is fully loaded to its 3500kg ATM, you’ve got 270kg payload remaining for the Ranger.

As mentioned, the Willow is not a competitor for the Sunliner, but highlights the fact that there are plenty of lighter caravans to choose from than there are fifth-wheelers -- which gives such caravans a payload advantage. The Willow loaded right to its 2800kg ATM would leave 930kg payload available for the Ranger.

In the fifth-wheeler’s case, it will be pretty easy to not add much weight to the ute because half of the tray area is taken by the hitch. While it’s possible to pack gear around the hitch, there’s no hiding the fact that tow vehicle load capacity is diminished with a fifth-wheeler.

Ease of attachment

Hitching up a fifth-wheeler is in some regards more involved than a caravan but in others it’s far simpler: hitching is easier but the process of getting the fifth-wheeler to stand on its own takes longer.

You begin by dropping the ute’s tailgate down, as it’s too tall when closed (if you forget to drop it down you will reverse into the pin and damage the tailgate).

Lining up the pin box on the fifth wheeler with the hitch on the ute is much easier than lining up a towball and caravan coupling, even when you have a reversing camera to guide you.

With the fifth wheeler, you simply look out the ute’s back window and guide the plate to the pin. The plate is relatively open at the engagement point so you don’t have to get the pin perfectly in line -- it’ll be guided into place.

There are three plates that together constitute the hitch -- one for the vehicle, one the turntable and one the pin box.

When fitting the hitch to the ute, there are two fixed swivel points to choose from -- one closer to the cab, one further back -- which you decide according to the measurements of the particular vehicle and RV.

If a front corner of the fifth-wheeler looks as if it will make contact with the back of the ute’s cab when cornering when set in the more forward swivel point position, then the hitch has to be set on the rearmost swivel position.

Once the pin has seated in the plate and you’ve locked in place with the locking handle and the brake-away safety wire (and plugged in the 12-pin plug and, if needed, Anderson plug), you need to raise the RV’s landing legs. In the Northshore’s case, the legs are electrically operated via a switch in the front boot (accessed from the side hatch).

The whole process takes about a minute or two more than when hitching up with a caravan. Unhitching a caravan is very quick, when you think about it, because all you need to do is wind up the A-frame on the jockey wheel, disconnect the chains, breakaway cable and trailer wiring and off you go -- taking no more than a minute.

Disconnecting a fifth-wheeler takes longer, simply because you have to wait for the landing legs to power down.

The flip side to that is you have pretty much stabilised the fifth-wheeler (or the front of it, at least) as part of that process. To stop the caravan wobbling around on its jockey wheel at camp, you have to wind down its stabilising legs.

At least with a fifth-wheeler, half the job is already done, leaving just the rear stabiliser legs to drop down (if needed).

Road test

With the fifth-wheeler and caravan both hitched up, it was time to get on the road and see how they compared. The fifth-wheeler rig felt a bit more brittle in its ride quality at lower speeds leaving town than the caravan. Cut in on tight corners seemed similar, with perhaps a slight advantage to the fifth-wheeler.

The fifth-wheeler’s theoretical advantage when towing is that rather than having the hitch point out behind the vehicle as with a caravan it's above the rear axle. This should reduce the tendency for the rig to sway.

Sure enough, out on the highway the fifth-wheeler was more stable in every situation. There was absolutely no movement at all when driving over rough surfaces or when being passed by large trucks at speed. This is not to say that the Conifer was a handful to tow -- it felt as stable as any well-balanced caravan - but the Sunliner was simply in another league.

Ride quality improved on the open road too, feeling less jiggly over bumps than the ute and van combo. In all, the fifth-wheeler rig was far more relaxing to tow with.

While our towing test wasn’t far enough to glean meaningful fuel figures, the consensus appears to be that there isn’t much in it for fuel consumption between fifth-wheelers and caravans.

Where the caravan will have the towing advantage is off road (with an off-road coupling, at least). There simply isn’t enough capability in the fifth-wheel coupling to handle the twists and turns of off-road angles.

Summing up

It's a shame that fifth-wheelers are at the expensive end of the market, and that the only vehicle you can use to tow with is a ute.

Yet if cheaper fifth-wheelers became available (Jayco tried but failed), and given the ute’s popularity in Australia, this towable, motorhome alternative could take more of a hold in the RV market here.

As it stands, for its more relaxed towing experience and large interior living space the fifth-wheeler is an attractive choice -- as long as you’re prepared to pay for it.