Towing With A Passenger Car

During my research yesterday on trailers, I decided to follow up today with common passenger car towing weights. This is the rated safe weight a vehicle can pull from a hitch without causing the rear wheels to lift and wrecking the car and trailer. This is VERY important for obvious reasons. Most front wheel drive cars are not good at towing things because there is too little weight on the rear wheels. Rear wheel or 4WD is preferred. This is why most people tow using trucks or vans. However, if you use a light enough trailer, you can tow it with a passenger car.

I decided to organize vehicles by tow capacity, as that limits your options to the kind of trailer you can tow behind it. This is listed as a weight. All trailer companies list this weight so you know if you vehicle can safely tow it.

1000 pounds: Honda Accord, Toyota Camry, Ford Focus, Nissan (Altima, Maxima, Sentra), Chevy Impala. Most 4-door passenger cars fall into this category. These vehicles can tow a gardener's trailer (metal framework with sides, no top) or a very small teardrop trailer, unladen. The kitchen tent, stove, water, table and chair will need to be put in the trunk, along with sleeping pad, clothes etc. The trailer will need to stay empty when towed. A popup trailer is around this weight too. However, the trailers are too small to live in year round. This level of tow capacity just isn't enough. Find another way. Seriously consider an RV that can tow your car instead. That will probably work better than trying to live inside a teardrop trailer for more than a week. A teardrop is better than a tent, but only just barely.

1500 pounds: Toyota Corolla, Honda Civic and Element. Chevy Colorado. This will let you tow a teardrop trailer with stuff inside (cabinets and kitchen, cooler, water, battery for appliances). This is more convenient, however its still not quite proper living. The smallest Scamp trailer is 13 feet and 1200 pounds. It's barely more than a room to sleep out of the rain, but its got a stove and a toilet and you can stand up inside. I don't think you can get smaller than this.

2400 pounds: Subaru Forester. Scamp builds a 16 foot trailer with bathroom and kitchen at 1800 pounds. Their larger 19 foot model is 2000 pounds. That would add 3 more feet of comfort room. Likely essential comfort.

Cramped, but might be liveable if you spend your time working and being outside instead of in there for more than sleeping. That kinda gives me pause because most of my neighbors have a Forester. Some of my readers probably do too.

2700 pounds: Subaru Legacy. Still working with ultralight trailers, but they can leave their stuff inside when towed. The Scamp and CampLite trailers would work fine for this vehicle.

3500-5000 pounds: various models of Ford, Chevy, and Toyota truck. Travel Lite makes small but full height trailers with the needed amenities to live at 3500 pounds weight. The video is the upgraded interior model.

At 4500 pounds you're talking full sized reasonably comfortable trailers you can live in full time. The Bigfoot trailers start at 3000 pounds, empty. Many models of Airstream trailer are around 4000-4500 pounds. If you're going to live in a trailer as a lifestyle to chase jobs, the more tow capacity your vehicle has the bigger and more humane living space. A full sized truck with the tow kit (and transmission cooler) will do this fine.

At 5k-10k pounds you need a specialized tow vehicle (larger pickup) with a strong engine and transmission designed for it. Anti-roll bars are a good idea. You may want to just rent one as needed and use a different vehicle for daily commuting once your trailer is situated.

I'd like to see any trailer you can live in having its roof covered in durable solar panels, running to a battery that can take thousands of recharges so it lasts a good long time. It should be able to deliver this power to run your appliances and probably some kind of charging ports for a cellphone and laptop and interior lights. The underside of the solar panels should be liquid cooling that runs to a water heater/heat exchanger since solar panels get physically HOT when absorbing photons to generate electricity. Overheating panels wrecks them. Thus a backing panel for cooling, ie Co-Generation, would be a "duh!" flash of the obvious with the secondary benefit of reducing power demand for water heating. That same hot water could be used in a floor mounted heater array so the place is comfy overnight. You just need sufficient insulation on the hot water heater/sump and a good thermostat control on the recirculation pump, one that's really quiet. Think of it as a heat-pump. Or as a solar water heater that just happens to have photoelectric cells on top which helps them work better. 

Having access to external information shifts you out of the "ignorant camper" back into "connected citizen" so this is pretty important for mental well-being. Being able to stay clean and washed is also really important. Being able to cook real food too, and eat it at a table with standard utensils. Its very difficult to offer this with a trailer under 1000 pounds. That's better than a tent, obviously, but not perfect.

If you cut off too much of the needed essence of our culture, you start cutting corners on what is Normal in your mind and may find yourself on the wrong side of the law. You want to avoid that. Ergo, the tow capacity of your vehicle and the trailer behind it means any shortcuts on living standards must be understood by their limiting factors. This means you have to either pay for that bigger vehicle's fuel or rent it for the move, then commute with something more efficient.

Considering the large number of trailer manufacturers and the use of fiberglass construction to really lower weight, it seems that if you have a Subaru or Pickup truck or SUV, you really can tow a trailer you can live in year long. It will be small inside, but if you're outdoorsy you won't care that much. Park it with hookups to power, water, and sewer in a managed trailer park with wifi and you're set. Move as needed to where the jobs are. It really can be done.

I wonder if I should be thinking about this for me someday?