Demco Autoslide 5th Wheel Trailer Hitch for Chevy/GMC - Single Jaw - Above Bed - 21,000 lbs
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2025 Ram 3500
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2025 Ram 3500
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This hitch takes the stress out of short-bed towing with its automatic sliding system that delivers 14" of fore/aft travel. As you turn, the rack-and-pinion gears move the head smoothly toward the tailgate, giving your rig the clearance it needs without you leaving the driver’s seat. When you straighten out, it slides itself back into position. The movement is controlled and precise, so low-speed turns in campgrounds or parking lots stay smooth and stable.
The single-piece wraparound jaw fully surrounds the king pin for 360-degree contact, giving you a tight, rattle-free connection. A 3/4" thick solid steel locking bar adds reinforcement once the jaw closes, automatically securing your trailer for peace of mind on every haul. That solid engagement helps cut down on noise and chucking so long drives feel steadier and more predictable.
The hitch head pivots both front to back and side to side for easy coupling on uneven ground and a smoother ride on the road. Three polyurethane dampeners cushion movement and absorb road shock—two for side-to-side action and one for front-to-back motion—reducing jarring and unwanted noise as you travel. It’s the kind of setup that just feels right when the truck and trailer move together naturally.
Made from sturdy steel with a rust-resistant black powder coat finish, this hitch is rated for 21,000 lbs gross towing weight and 5,250 lbs vertical load. It’s built to handle large fifth wheels confidently while staying stable under load. The base includes diamond-plate tread styling that adds grip and durability where it counts.
Installation is straightforward with custom brackets, included base rails, and preassembled components that bolt together easily. The side plates adjust the head height between 15-1/4", 16-1/2", and 18" to dial in your trailer level and bed rail clearance. Once installed, the spring-loaded handle with a tethered safety pin keeps coupling simple, locking securely in place whether open or closed.
Alternate Instructions
Videos are provided as a guide only. Refer to manufacturer installation instructions and specs for complete information.
Hey everybody, Ryan here at etrailer. Today on our 2017 GMC Sierra 2500. We're gonna be showing you how to install the Demco side plates for fifth wheel rails. But before we do that, why don't we check them out and make sure that this is something that's gonna work for you. So this is just going to have the side plates and some hardware. So you get your passenger side one and your driver's side one.
That's what we're showing off here today. And it seems like a really big reason people are looking for just the side plates is that they had another truck and already had a fifth wheel hitch set up in there. And a lot of times the hitch can carry over as well as the rails. The rails are pretty universal for the most part. I mean, there's a ton of them out there, so I can't really go over every single one of them, but generally speaking, pretty universal.
And so you want to save your hitch. You're familiar with it, you liked the way it works and everything else. So you end up getting a new truck and you don't want to have to build a whole new kit again. And so that's where picking up just the side plates are gonna become useful. You can still utilize your old rails as long as they fit with the side plates and your fifth wheel hitch itself ahead of it.
And on your new truck, you can just put the side plates, use some of that existing parts that you already had, and you'll have a hitch in there again ready to go. Now I do suggest if that's what you're doing, if you have any old hardware that's kind of beat up or anything like that, you're gonna be doing some heavy towing, probably not a bad idea into making sure some of those things are new, and that way you don't have to worry about any issues down the road. And although the rails don't come with just the side plates, if these are something you need separately as well, or these are actually what you're looking for, you can pick these up as well separately, or if you need the whole kit, if you'd just rather say I'm not gonna try to reuse anything, just give me all new stuff and call it a day, you can also pick this up as a custom fit kit as well. So, that's really nice, that custom fit stuff, you're gonna have the confidence, knowing that everything's gonna bolt up, bolt up to your truck the way you want it to. With the side brackets, these are gonna be custom fit to your truck, so they make it really easy.
On this here truck, we simply just utilize some factory weld nuts that are already in the frame, so literally the bolts just thread right in. I believe on some of the older model trucks, they don't have those weld nuts, but they utilize these openings here, so that's just gonna be, depending on what year truck you have and how you're gonna install it, but either way, you're not gonna have to drill or do anything like that, so a really convenient setup. As far as the installation goes, just the side plates are really simple like we just talked about. But chances are pretty good if you're gonna be doing that, you're probably gonna be trying to set up a whole kit. Right The whole package. So we'll go ahead and walk you through on not only how to do the side plates, but as if you we're gonna put a hitch in your truck right from the beginning. So if that information is something that you need it'll be there, if not, you can just kind of skip on past to where we're on the side plates. As far as the difficulty of the whole fifth wheels set up, if you will. As far as getting that installed, it's really not bad. Probably the hardest part to it is torquing down some of the bolts, they're just really tight and in kind of a funny spot, so I give you guys a couple of options as far as some tools that you can use that'll make that a little bit easier. So hopefully that'll help get you going. But speaking of that, why don't we go ahead and pull into the garage and put everything on together now. To begin your installation, you're gonna be here up in the bed of the truck, and first thing you want to do is clean out your bed and make it easy to work in here. If you have a drop-in bed bed liner, I suggest removing that, that'll give us the most accurate installation, and make it much easier. With that said, the first thing that you want to do is take one of your rails and we're gonna have to find the placement of it. So you're going to measure from the end of the bed, make sure you're going from the end of the bed and not the tailgate. And you're gonna take that measurement and make a mark. And then you want to refer to the instructions for that correct measurement, because there is a difference between the short bed or, I'm sorry, the six and a half foot bed and the long bed. In our case, we have the shorter bed today. But what I do is make a mark and then I just use this as a straight edge to kind of draw a line all the way cross, and I'm gonna get it roughly in position. And then you want to make sure that it is centered on the truck bed. So the way I do that is measure from our wheel well, to the edge of the rail on each side, and you want the distance to be the same. So once I find that distance, I also use a straight edge and just make a mark there. That way we have kind of a reference and we can make sure our rail is gonna be exactly where it needs to go. So since that line that we drew, the distance, they want you to line that up with the center of our rail here. and so you can kind of look down through the openings, and get it pretty close as eyeball it. But we want to go a step further and make sure it's exact. And make sure that this is perfectly square. So what I've done is take your measure, go from the end of the bed again, and just go to one edge of the rail, in our case, I just followed this one. So for example, on ours here today, the edge here is about 32 inches. And so I made sure that the other side was at 32 inches. And now we know it's exactly square. And once I found that, I just took our marker and kind of traced all the way around it. That way we have a diagram more or less on where this needs to go exactly. Now at this point, definitely need a couple of friends, you're gonna take your preassembled hitch, set the second rail upfront, roughly in position, and then we're gonna take this and actually drop it into our rails. If they move around a little bit, not a huge deal. That's why we marked that one exactly where it needs to go. So we can slide it around a little bit if need be. So once you have this in here, what you're gonna do, make sure this front rail is squared up and everything and plum. What I've done is made sure the back was where we originally had it, and then measure the distance between this edge and this edge and make sure that they're the same on each side. Not a bad idea to check the distance from your rear wells as well here. Once I found that perfect spot, again, I just drew a pattern around our front rail too just to give us a reference, make sure that we can kind of constantly keep an eye on it while we're going through this process. From there, excuse me, each one of the rails, this hole, the second one in, that's the attachment points that we're gonna be using. So I'm just gonna take a marker, put a dot in the center. I already did the other three attachment points. And then what we're gonna do is I'm gonna drill a pilot hole. Just got a small, relatively small drill bit, and before you start doing this too check underneath your truck, make sure you don't have anything that we're gonna drill into. You shouldn't, but if you have any aftermarket stuff down there, whatever, just to be on the safe side. So your best here to get it in the center. Then we'll drill a small hole on each corner. Now what we need to do is enlarge those holes that we drilled to five eighths in diameter. Problem is even if you had that large or rather tight drill bit, it's almost too big to go through this hole. And I really don't want to damage our square opening here in our rail. So since we have each hole kind of pre-drilled and marked already, what I think I'm gonna do is kind of just move our hitch out of the way a little bit. And this one looks like I was a little bit off. That's okay though. And if you move that out of the way, since we have everything marked already, we can use a step bit like this, or you can use your regular bit, whatever you're trying to do. So with that said, I'll go ahead and enlarge all of our holes. Since this one I am off just a hair, probably I'll just try to shift it over a little bit if I can. So what I've done is vacuumed up all the metal shavings, in the holes that we drilled, I shot some spray paint over them and let them dry just to get a coat of paint over that bare metal. Slide the hitch back into the rough position. Then you're gonna take these spacer blocks here. Slide that in between the corrugation and the rail. Then you're gonna take these hockey puck looking bushings, slide them in and line them up with the hole that we drilled like so, and then we're gonna take the long, I believe they're three and a half inch carriage bolts, drop them down. We're gonna to do that same thing on the three remaining corners. Now we can come over to our wheel wells and we're gonna be working on our frame rail. Wipe this down, get it clean, and we're gonna be using four attachment points to bolt up our side plates. We got two well nuts here, and two more well nuts here. Not a bad idea if you spray them down with some penetrating oil, some type of cleaner and wipe those threads clean. I'm just using a tooth brush. That way you get some of that undercoating out of there. These GM trucks, they really pack on this undercoating and any dirt would jump out of there, and what we'll to do is take our side plate. They are labeled, so you really can't mix that up. Driver's side. These slots up here, our bolts that we put in through the bed, those are gonna go through there. And coming right in on up, Hold it in place. We're gonna take a bolt, a split lock washer, and get these started hand tight. What I like to do is just get one or two of them going, that way it'll kind of hold it roughly into position. And a lot of times, what you're gonna need to do, every truck will be set up a little bit different and how you drill will vary a little bit. So you may have to kind of manipulate this plate here to get the bolts to line up perfectly. Looks like I might have to a little bit here, so what I'm gonna do is grab a tool. So I'm gonna use a tool like this, just kind of spreads out a little bit. You can see right there, one of those holes is kind of blocked a little bit. I'm just gonna take this, put it up through one of those access holes and kind of work that side plate over to hold it in possession where I need it to be. Then of course, once you have all of them started, we tighten it down and kind of draw everything together. That makes sense. So once we have these hand tight, we'll go ahead, go over to the other side and repeat the same process. Now we come back with the 15-16 socket and snug everything down. Now we need to make sure and come back with a torque wrench, tighten down all of our bolts to the amount specified in the instructions. If you don't have a torque wrench, you can grab one here at etrailer, or a lot of times if you go to your local auto parts stores, they'll have one there available to rent. So back up in the bed here, I went underneath our truck and just kind of took a look at where we're gonna need to secure these actual bolts. And upon further inspection, it seems to me we'd be better off taking these spacers that we had in here originally, and actually putting them underneath the truck on this part of the corrugation. It's kind of one of those deals, 'cause our bolt is literally going through kind of the edge of our corrugation. So it could go really either way. If you put it here, this one will crush, we put it here, that one will crush. But I think what our best option is pull these out, since we don't have anything bolted down, you can kind of just knock these out. We're gonna put these underneath. And you're also gonna have these large ones. I think we're gonna put these here, under there. And that way, if it does start to crush a little bit, this is gonna stop it and prevent that from happening. If it doesn't, not a big deal, we can always just slide these back out whenever we have everything tightened down. So I'm gonna go ahead and switch all these out and then I'll go underneath the truck. So underneath our truck, you can see it here, our frame brackets and where our bolt comes down. Take the spacer, slide this through like so. Now all these they might not go in that easy. You might have to kind of pry up on your bolt and slide the block and drop the bolt back down, or kind of pry this down a little bit. Every truck is gonna be a little bit different. But once that's in, we're gonna take a flat washer, put that on up, and a flange nut, get this going hand tight here and then repeat the same process for our three remaining corners there. So now that we have all the bolts in there and hand tight, I came back with a regular box wrench and tighten them down as much as I could. Which brings me to my next point. Now it's time to torque them down. And you don't have a ton of space up there. So you can't get kind of your classic socket on there. There's a few tools that you can use to make this a little bit easier. Now they're all gonna be 15s, 16s in size. One of them is like this, I believe this is called the dog bone if I'm not mistaken. This one worked out pretty well, it's relatively thin. The other one, you could use a crow's foot like this. And all these just go on the end of the torque wrench. Like that. So it's kind of low profile. And then there's another one. I assume this would be a crow's foot as well. It just doesn't have the extra sides, like a line wrench or something would. Unfortunately I don't have the right size in this one, but tightening a couple of bolts down already, one like this would probably work the best. So it's a lot more low-profile and a little bit easier to get in there. But with that said, we can still make do here. And now that we know what tools you can use to get this process done, let's go ahead. We're gonna grab this one and I'll show you one of them getting torqued and kind of how this works. So the way this works, it'll slide in there and go up and around the bolt. Obviously before you torque everything, you want to get them as tight as you can with the regular box wrench, try to draw everything down evenly. But once we have that done, we'll come back and make sure it's all torqued. As you could see, there's just not a ton of room up here, so it's gonna take a little bit of time, be patient with it, take a break in between if you need to. It can get a little frustrating. With everything torqued down, what I did was remove our actual fifth wheel head. And in our case, we had this bed liner. So I dropped that in, kind of eyeballed it. Kind of measured out where it's gonna hit our rails and I'm gonna just cut an opening out here. I'll lay it in there, make sure it fits and then I'll do the same thing for the rail up towards the front. So I'm just gonna use an air saw to do this. You can use a cutoff wheel kind of just whatever you have laying around. So I'll go ahead and get that done now. So got that cut out, dropped it on in and it's in there loosely, but it looks good. I'm pretty happy with it. So what I'm gonna do is measure the distance between our back rail to the front one, take some rough measurements and then I'll probably just use the piece that we cut out here kind of as a template so you can just roughly measure it, set this down, make our lines and come back and make a cut. And that'll finish up our look at and our installation of the Demco side plates for fifth wheel rails on our 2017 GMC Sierra 2500..
Ratings & Reviews
Bought for use on my 2019 Ram 2500 shortbox because I was having clearance issues while turning. I could barely make a 45 degree turn. Installed the unit in about an hour from delivery to finish. Have an extra guy or two to help cause its heavy. I can know back 90 degrees if I had to with about 4-6 inches of cab clearance
great product i love it etrailer support was great. I had a question called the manufacture they have great service too. Best part is its MADE IN THE USA in Iowa.
This sliding hitch is great. I have no worries about my fifth wheel crushing my truck cab. It's the real deal.
Purchased a heavier 5th wheel so this one replaced my pull rite. No more capture plate to deal with. Very happy with this hitch.
I have not received the Autoslide trailer hitch only the locking plate.
When will I get the hitch??
I wish the place I bought my camper would have recommended this from the start. Makes owning a 5th wheel so much easier!
Good hitch but very heavy and hard to maneuver
If that's not an issue it works perfect
Don't have to worry about turning with 6,4 bed
Etrailer great job shipping , etc
Worked good but a lot of adjustments. They sent the wrong capture plates. Demco customer support was great.
Sierra K.
9/1/2021
In the description it says locking plates, sold separately, are required for the Rota-Flex Pin box that you have. Item # DM6171
The hitch and adaptor arrived in three days. Everything went together fairly easy considering I had just torn my rotator cuff a week earlier and my helper never showed up. Definitely would have been easier with two people. Had planned a trip next week to Yellowstone National Park but will have to wait until after surgery. Will do a follow up review after I am able to see how well auto slide works. Great customer service!
Really like this hitch. Two things I don't like however, are 1) you need to backup almost perfectly the way you unhooked or it's a bear to hitch backup. 2) I don't like the bolts for the pinbox. Wish there was a quicker alternative. Hate getting a wrench out to tighten and losen.
I think that etrailer requires their employees to lie so as not to have any confrontations with customers on the phone. I placed two orders on 8/23 and immediately received followup emails that order received, order processed by (employee name) and then is in stock with associated time each step completed.
Then I noticed that shipping date kept getting 1 day later each day I checked order status. So, I contacted etrailer on day 5, 8/27 and find out my item was not in stock at all and would not be until mid Oct. Well,I then had them order me the same part by a different manufacturer and was told that it was in stock and would still be still be shipped 8/28 and delivered on 8/30, the same day my fifth wheel hitch is being delivered, so everything seemed rectified until I checked order status online the evening of 8/28 and find that the ship date again had been pushed back another day 8/29 with a delivery date of 9/1, (which is a Sunday). Seems that at this rate I may have it sometime in September. Going by their assurance of delivery on 8/30, I arranged to pickup my new camper on 9/5, that seems to be an impossibility at this time because Order #121389499 the installation kit with base rails is a very necessary part of the assembly. So, in closing I can only say that if you do not have the parts to ship, be honest and state the truth. This has made me feel very negative now toward etrailor as I already had become with Camping World. Is there any honesty in the RV parts aftermarket?
We received the hitch in great shape. The boxes were in very good shape. The only problem was a missing polyurethane dampener that was’t included. I called and received great service from etrailer. I have had a demco autoslide for several years but it was an 18000 pound hitch and went to a 21000 pound hitch. They are the best hitch for a shortened truck on the market
Extremely well made product and as always arrived in perfect condition. Etrailer is my go to for all things trailer related and is the first place I look!! They have the best prices around and stand behind every sale which gives me confidence in every purchase. I love this hitch and look forward to many years of towing with it! Thank you again etrailer!!
thanks to Greg S. he helped me a lot in choosing and answering all my questions
Very happy with the product. The only draw back is the weight. Can't be loaded/unloaded by one person.
A good cross-sell opportunity is to offer a tool for removal.
When I first got it, it didn't fit the truck. Support team was helpful and responsive. It seemed to be due to the bed spray. I was able to get it to mount perfectly by loosening a bolt under the truck, and then smoothing the edges of the locks in the rails.
If you have to have a slider this is the one to buy. I’ve now driven with it about 5000 miles..the only down side is that you have to hook and unhook with the truck perfectly straight in line with the trailer. But it does work perfectly as advertised.
Richard
6/5/2019
Great, customer service with [Demco Representative] could not be any better..he knows this hitch like the back of his hand . I would buy another just because of him.
It works really well. It is really nice not to worry about the 5th wheel trailer clearance when making tight turns. We pulled the rig several hundred miles last summer and at least 3000 more since January with no issues.
Also I used the height adjustment feature when setting up my trailer.
When I received the shipment I was impressed by how well it was packed. It would have been nice to had had help, but I was able to assemble and mount it myself. The instructions were good, and as I said, we have had no issues during our first snowbird season.
This is an initial impression review. The hitch was delivered on a pallet and arrived earlier than expected. Everything was well packaged with all associated hardware. This hitch was mounted on Reese Quick-Install Custom Outboard Installation Kit w/ Base Rails for 5th Wheel Trailer Hitches ( in the bed of a 2007 Dodge Mega Cab 3500. Overall it appears to be well constructed, unfortunately, I did have issues with bolting the hitch adapters to the hitch. The hardware is either grade 3 or 5 (looks like 5) and did not torque well. I had one bolt that stretched and sheared before I reached the torque spec (photo attached). I'm not sure if this was designed to use the weaker hardware or a business decision, however, all eight bolts were replaced with grade 8. I do look forward to utilizing this hitch in a few months. I would at photos, however it appears that I can't.
Works great except life would be so much simpler if they had a hole drilled on each side to remove the lock pins that are below it in the mounting plate to be able to remove the unit from the truck.
Jon G.
7/30/2021
Thank you for the review! While I do see where a hole in the mounting bracket would make this easier to remove with your Adapter Plate # DM6333, a solid bracket in this instance is much better for strength, especially considering this hitch is designed around the universal rails for trucks.
I had trouble with this hitch at first. I could not get it to close and latch properly when I backed into the king pin. I worked with tech services and ended up replacing the inner pivot parts and I have really not had any issues since. Because I have to have the locking plate for my pin box, you do have to line up the truck just right for it to latch properly, but once you figure that out, it is easy. The auto slide feature works really good. I have a short bed RAM truck and I have completely turned 90 degrees with my trailer attached and it slides back with no issues to miss my cab. I highly recommend this hitch. Also the Demco Tech Services guys are great to work with.
Best 5th wheel hitch ever for a RAM 3500 mega cab.
No issues with the RV coming close to the back of the cab or back glass.
I would recommend this hitch to anyone searching for a 5th wheel hitch for a Ram mega cab, I wish I knew about it when I first purchased my Ram mega cab, I learned the hard way, after busting out my back glass...and trying several hitches. This hitch is truly an autoslide. I have showed several short bed guys this hitch and told them the cost of the 5th wheel hitch is worth it.... It is top of the line. This will be the last 5th wheel hitch I will ever need to purchase.
Great hitch. No capture plate to deal with, you can hook up to any 5th wheel. No more greasy pin box. No more watching the mirror wondering if your going to hit and damage the cab of your truck. Works perfectly. Built solid, though I did purchase the 21K for a 15K 5th wheel. Easy to lube. The only drawback I had was that it sat just a little bit high in the truck even on the lowest mounting holes. If you are thinking of purchasing this you may want to take some measurements first. I have an 08' F350 SD with air springs so it does set high. Before I bought it I called the factory (easy to reach and eager to help) and asked them, among other things," if the hitch broke, could I easily get parts for it?" They replied that if you need parts we will get them to you wherever you are. Overall I think this is the best hitch on the market.
Joe W.
10/26/2018
After about 6000 miles the hitch developed some fore and aft movement. After another 2000 miles it seemed to be excessive with a loud clunk when stopping and starting. Yes, I do grease it as per instructions before each trip. I called Demco and told them the problem and they sent me the parts I needed at no charge since it was under warranty. Since I had the mechanical ability I disassembled, diagnosed and repaired it myself. I thought later on that I should have been compensated something for my time only because if I took it to a dealer they would have charged for labor. Just a suggestion, there needs to be an easier way to lubricate this hitch rather than removing the large pivot pin and also the large pivot bolt and greasing them by hand. Some well placed grease fittings would make this job a lot easier and cleaner, especially when on the road. Also, the hitch owner would be far more inclined to do it. Other than that the hitch has performed great and I am very happy with it. Thanks.
The kit came with everything and instruction. Very easy to understand how it all fits together. Getting the rail bolt washers and nuts were pretty difficult to get started. You just got to take your time and you will get.
This is a quality piece of equipment. I can't wait to use it. The installation directions were complete and easy to follow. Looks fantastic.
This review is for the Demco Autoslide 21k and accompanying OEM rail adaptor I purchased for a 2020 Ram 3500 Megacab DRW. I've owned it one year. Overall, the hitch performs as I expected. It is high quality, very sturdy and seems like it will last for a long time. I had it installed at the dealer when I purchased the truck. It automatically slides to protect the cab in my 6'4" bed without any incidents. I tow a standard fifth wheel RV. There are a few negatives, which are not necessarily shortcoming of the product but, instead, necessary evils to allow me to have a short bed. First, it is BIG and BULKY. I believe this is just a function of the mechanism required to allow the autosliding feature and I am not really sure there are any other lighter alternatives with this feature. The fact it requires two parts (OEM Puck Rail and hitch), make it even more bulky. It takes up almost the entire bed and prevents most auxillary tank / tool box combos from fitting. Even standard size storage bins will not fit in my bed. I would prefer if they had a custom OEM all-in-one hitch for my truck like they do for the Ford. It adds significant weight, which decreases carrying capacity, which can be at a premium in hauling a heavy fifth wheel. I've never even tried to take it out of the bed due to the weight and difficulty. I also am not very happy with the adjustable catch plate design. It requires significant manipulation loosening and tightening 8 nuts when hitching and unhitching. This requires a step ladder to reach the nuts. I also found out after the fact that it does not come with the right size catch plate attachments for my hitch and I had to purchase a separate part, which added unexpected expense and delayed my taking the RV on its first trip. Overall, I am satisfied with the hitch.
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Darrel
1/17/2023
I firmly believe that every fifth sold should have one of these hitches. It is a job getting it in and out of truck but I feel better knowing its not going to let my trailer damage my truck.