2026 Forest River Wildcat33CHEF

The 33CHEF is Wildcat’s rear-kitchen plan, built for couples who cook and work remote. It pairs a rear kitchen with a kitchen island and a tri-fold sofa with a private front king bedroom, opened by three slide-outs, and sleeps four (Cardinal markets it as sleeping two to four). At a 1,885-pound dry pin it carries the lowest pin weight in the profiled line. It rides the full Wildcat build: a 2-inch vacuum-bonded aluminum-framed sidewall structure, a one-piece molded fiberglass front cap, a PVC roof membrane with a lifetime warranty, a heated and enclosed underbelly with 12-volt tank heat pads and sectioned ABS armor, and 4-point automatic leveling.

Forest River publishes a 10,558-pound UVW, a 3,327-pound CCC and a 13,885-pound GVWR (the published GVWR equals UVW plus CCC exactly), against the profiled line’s lowest dry pin of 1,885 pounds. An 18,000-BTU ducted air conditioner (a 45,000-BTU three-A/C system is optional here, with a third 13,500-BTU unit available), a 35,000-BTU furnace, a 5,000-BTU electric fireplace, a 60,000-BTU tankless water heater, a 16-cubic-foot 12-volt refrigerator, a 21-inch 2-in-1 oven range, a 30-inch over-the-range microwave and a 60-gallon fresh tank are standard, under two power awnings (15 and 11 feet) with a 200-watt rooftop solar prep.

US street pricing has commonly run in the mid-to-low $60,000s and as low as the high $50,000s on closeouts. It is the rear-galley, work-from-the-road Wildcat. For a couple who wants a rear kitchen with an island and a private front king bedroom on the line’s lowest pin — towed behind a properly rated three-quarter-ton or larger truck — the 33CHEF is the line’s cook’s plan. It is sold as the Cardinal 33CHEF under a sister badge.

Wildcat is Forest River's mid-profile affordable-luxury fifth wheel — a step above the brand's own value-mid Arctic Wolf and a step below its premium-mainstream Sandpiper. Six of the most distinct 2026 floorplans are profiled here in full. The 33CHEF on this page is highlighted; each other plan links to its own page.

This floorplan carries its water comfortably. A full 60-gallon fresh tank is roughly 15% of the 3,327-pound cargo capacity, leaving the 33CHEF with a usable gear budget even when you tow full.

The published dry pin weight of 1,885 pounds is 18% of this floorplan’s 10,558-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 13,885-pound GVWR the 33CHEF is towing 3,327 pounds more than its 10,558-pound dry figure, and that is the number your vehicle has to be rated for — not the brochure weight.

Tank balance is generous here: 60 gallons of fresh against 76 grey and 38 black, so waste capacity keeps pace with supply and the fresh tank is the constraint that ends a dry stay.

Ranked by GVWR, the 33CHEF sits 2 of 10 in the Wildcat line: 13,885 pounds against a line that runs from 13,500 to 15,498 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: Wildcat 32LIVE is 385 pounds lighter at 13,500 lb GVWR; and Wildcat 37PUB is 165 pounds heavier at 14,050 lb GVWR.

Against the 33CHEF: the Eagle 335LSTS is 85 lb lighter; the Avenue 32RLS is 110 lb heavier and 3 ft shorter. 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 Wildcat floorplans profiled here run 10,363 to 12,698 pounds dry and 36 to 44 feet of exterior length across 10 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 Wildcat line hub.

This catalog tracks 18 specification fields per floorplan. Named sources publish 18 of them for the 33CHEF. 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: 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 (95%) 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.

Values on this page carrying an asterisk were derived by arithmetic from published figures, or come from a single source, rather than being printed directly by the manufacturer. The flag travels with the number into the downloadable spec sheet.

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