2026 Cougar Half-Ton29BHL

The Cougar Half-Ton 29BHL is the family bunkhouse of the half-ton fifth-wheel line — the plan that brings fifth-wheel stability and a bi-level interior to families who need to sleep a crowd without a three-quarter-ton truck. A rear bunk room handles the kids, a raised front bedroom over the truck bed gives the parents privacy, and dual slides open the mid-coach living and dining area, pushing nominal capacity to ten in a 33-foot coach. It is the fifth-wheel counterpart to the 28BHS travel trailer, trading the bumper-pull's lower entry for a more planted tow.

It carries the full Cougar Half-Ton build — a five-sided aluminum superstructure, laminated HyperCore composite sidewalls, a walkable one-piece TPO roof under a lifetime limited roofing warranty, and a heated, enclosed underbelly under the Climate Guard package — on tandem 4,400-pound axles with Goodyear Endurance E-rated tires. The kingpin over the rear axle delivers the fifth wheel's characteristic stability, valuable with a full family and a long trailer, and at 12′7″ tall it keeps the height manageable.

Its standout number is payload: at 8,345 pounds dry against an 11,000-pound GVWR it leaves 2,655 pounds of cargo capacity — the most of any half-ton fifth wheel profiled here, and a meaningful margin once ten people's gear, bikes and water are aboard. Its 1,610-pound dry pin weight is moderate for a fifth wheel, but it lands directly on the truck's payload and rises loaded, so match it to an honestly-equipped half-ton and weigh it before relying on the brochure figure. For families who want a bunkhouse fifth wheel's stability and space without a heavy truck, the 29BHL is the Cougar Half-Ton line's most capable family fifth wheel.

Keystone's Cougar splits into two families. The full-size Cougar is the heavier flagship fifth wheel — 5,100-pound axles, H-rated tires and roughly 13′4″ of height. The Cougar Half-Ton line is engineered to be towable by a properly equipped half-ton truck, and Keystone offers it as both a fifth wheel and a travel trailer — lighter 4,400-pound axles, Goodyear Endurance tires, and lower pin or tongue weights. The 29BHL on this page is highlighted; each other profiled plan links to its own page. The full Cougar catalogue runs to dozens of floorplans across both families; the highest-demand layouts are detailed here and the rest are catalogued on the line hub.

This floorplan carries its water comfortably. A full 54-gallon fresh tank is roughly 17% of the 2,655-pound cargo capacity, leaving the 29BHL with a usable gear budget even when you tow full.

The published dry pin weight of 1,610 pounds is 19% of this floorplan’s 8,345-pound dry weight. Fifth-wheel pin weight rides in the bed of the truck, so it comes off payload rather than off tow rating — and it rises with the trailer as you load it, not in proportion to what you put over the axles.

Nothing above changes the ceiling. Loaded to its 11,000-pound GVWR the 29BHL is towing 2,655 pounds more than its 8,345-pound dry figure, and that is the number your vehicle has to be rated for — not the brochure weight.

Tank balance is generous here: 54 gallons of fresh against 60 grey and 30 black, so waste capacity keeps pace with supply and the fresh tank is the constraint that ends a dry stay.

Ranked by GVWR, the 29BHL sits 3 of 5 in the Cougar line among the plans that publish one: 11,000 pounds against a line that runs from 10,075 to 14,000 pounds. That position is the useful thing to know, because the plans immediately either side of it are the real alternatives.

Either side of it in the same line: Cougar 26RKE matches it exactly at 11,000 lb GVWR; and Cougar 316RLS is 1,900 pounds heavier at 12,900 lb GVWR.

1 other Cougar plan shares this floorplan’s 11,000 lb GVWR, so the ranking above separates plans that tow to the same ceiling. On a shared chassis the figure that actually differs between them is cargo capacity and where the weight sits, not the rating.

Against the 29BHL: the Eagle 27RS is 5 lb lighter and sleeps 4 fewer; the Reflection 28RL is 5 lb lighter and 2 ft shorter and sleeps 6 fewer; the Avenue 28BH is 505 lb lighter and sleeps 4 fewer. Those are differences in the published numbers only — what they cost, how they are built and how they live are separate questions each of those pages answers on its own terms.

Those are the nearest fifth wheels from other lines by weight — one per line, picked by proximity on that figure and nothing else. They are listed so the same tow vehicle can be checked against real alternatives, not because they are equivalent inside; layout, build and price diverge sharply across that group.

For scale, the Cougar floorplans profiled here run 6,640 to 11,625 pounds dry and 28 to 39 feet of exterior length across 8 plans. Where a floorplan falls in that spread usually says more about which vehicle can tow it, and which site it fits, than the layout name does.

Every profiled floorplan in this line, with the full weight table, is on the Cougar line hub.

This catalog tracks 18 specification fields per floorplan. Named sources publish 15 of them for the 29BHL. The rest are not shown, because the alternative is reading a figure across from a sibling floorplan or from what the segment usually does — and a number nobody published is worth less than an admitted gap.

Not published for this floorplan: exterior width, interior height, awning, tire size (a tire description is published, a size is not). If you find one of these in a manufacturer document for this plan, it belongs on this page.

The completeness figure at the foot of this page (97%) measures the same thing on the full field set: it is a measurement of how much this floorplan’s manufacturer publishes, not of how much research went into the page.

How every figure here was sourced and checked is set out on the methodology page.