Ians0769 Hello and welcome to the forum! I see you posted this twice, so I removed your post on the thread from 2021. You are much more likely to get some traction in your own thread.

Your max payload in an Explorer is going to be your limiting factor. If you look inside your drivers door of your Ex, there should be a label that will indicate what the max payload (everything in the vehicle except the 150 pound driver) including the tongue weight of the trailer. The advertised tongue weight in the brochure is empty with no battery or propane, loaded the tongue weight will be 10-15% of the weight of the trailer, I would figure 600-900 pounds. See what your max payload of the Ex is, figure out how much weight you put in it (passengers and cargo), add about 100 pounds for your hitch, and then see how much room you have left for tongue weight. If you have 1000 pounds left you will be fine, less than that you have to start thinking of how you are going to load the trailer. Less than 600 pounds I would say is a no go.

Read the manual on the Explorer carefully. The 560 lbs may be without a WDH. With a WDH you may be able to increase the tongue weight.

Disclaimer: I am not offering professional/expert/certified advice. This is from a guy who had a very similar situation as yourself.

First, I am assuming you have the 3.0L Ecobosst with the 3.58 rear axle ratio.

If you look at Ford's Towing Guide, you are correct. Your towing capacity should be 5,600#. Also note the GCVWR is 10,600#. This is also important. This is the allowable weight of both the tow vehicle (Explorer) and the trailer (17 MKE XLS). You can keep the trailer to 5600# or less, but you will also need to keep your Explorer at 5000# or less. That is fully loaded with people, pets, gear, fuel....

FOr SUV"s and Vans the GCVWR is the main limiting factor.




The max tongue weight of 560# looks to be correct as well. It also seems a WDH is not required. This is likely due to the small tongue weight.








A couple years ago we bought a trailer with a GVWR (9995#) 400# over our tow vehicles tow rating (9600#). We knew we would never hit the 9995# mark. The tow vehicle payload was about 3600# and the trailer tongue weight was 1150#. I was OK with this so we bought the trailer.

A couple weeks later I noticed our tow vehicles GCVWR was 16000#. I started doing the math....a fully loaded tow vehicle was around 7700#. 16000-7700= 8300#. SO 8300# was the MAX the trailer could weigh. Empty the trailer was 7000# so we had 1300# to play with. I knew there were trips where we would hit 2000# or more of cargo in the trailer.

In reality the tow vehicle would pull the trailer. It would be slow up mountains...but we would always be right at the limit of the tow vehicle. With kids and wife in the vehicle I wasn't comfortable with that thought.

Also if there was an accident while towing the trailer, the insurance company would note that I was over capacity (they look at GVWR of each vehicle, GCVWR, payload, etc) and not cover anything because I was unsafe.

In the end we upgraded the tow vehicle. That was very expensive, but I'm glad we did it. We've never had any issue with towing and I feel completely at ease while towing our trailer around.

Hope this is helpful.