CajunRider I'm curious if you ended up doing this tow. If so how well did your truck handle it?
I just finished hauling my DK45 TLB on a 1300 mile round trip from Virginia to NY. With a root rake, standard bucket, loaded rears, chains and binders the load scaled in at 8100 pounds. As the trailer weighed 2700 empty the total load was near 11k.
My tow vehicle is a GMC 2500hd 4x4, crew cab, long bed, 6l gas engine, automatic with toying package. The truck struggled, but succeeded, keeping at highway speed (65 MPH) on some of the grades around Scranton on Interstate 81 but otherwise the truck handled it well. No stopping problems, and the truck controlled the load in cross winds and when maneuvering. I think for that route my truck was the bare minimum for the load. Even on flat roads I would be very uncomfortable using a 1/2 ton.