Can a minivan really pull a trailmanor?

Most of the smaller tow vehicle are rated at 3500 lbs. The 2720SL with the provision for two addults is much greater than 3500lbs.

[Mr. Adventure]

3500# tow ratings are perfect for 3500# trailers.

The experience reported on this forum is varied among Tow Vehicle manufacturers, and the manufacturers sure don't make it easy to get to the critical numbers so it's hard to get to the bottom line. You don't happen to remember the curb weight and the Gross Combined Weight Rating of your Ford Escape, do you? Just curious.

Originally Posted by Mr. Adventure

3500# tow ratings are perfect for 3500# trailers.

Just be aware that a 3500 pound trailer weighs 4500 pounds if you have a 1000 pounds of water, options and stuff. It is not unusual for the difference between factory dry weight and actual loaded weight to differ by 1000 pounds.

But, you don't have to carry that much stuff. Leave some at home.

" 3500# tow ratings are perfect for 3500# trailers. "

Uhm..... interesting idea....

While I am not an expert at much of anything one thing I can share with anyone looking into towing anything anywhere is something I learned from designing electronic circuits many moons ago in college. Strange? yes. Back when how something worked and how long it worked was important... I always designed and built my test models to do twice what I wanted them to do while running in the normal mode whatever that was. Overkill? yes. ( got good grades though ) They worked all the time, every time, even when pressed beyond their labeled outputs. Same goes with tow vehicles. IMHO a third more than what you need will pay off by lasting longer, offer you and your family greater Safety, and perhaps Happiness. Kinda hard to put a dollar figure on those last two. I am lucky in a way that my tow vehicle is my toy, sort of... and I do not use it much for everyday. But even it sitting still has a price. Depends on what you want. I can fill the bed, tow the 2720SL with a normal hitch, and she may only rise up an inch off her springs in the front depending on how much extra water is in the back. Some folks have dogs. I have the truck...

Whatever you tow with be safe. Tow vehicles can be replaced. You can't.

[Mr. Adventure]

Originally Posted by PopBeavers

Just be aware that a 3500 pound trailer weighs 4500 pounds if you have a 1000 pounds of water, options and stuff. It is not unusual for the difference between factory dry weight and actual loaded weight to differ by 1000 pounds.

But, you don't have to carry that much stuff. Leave some at home.

A 2619 pound trailer with 1000 pounds of stuff added weighs 3619 pounds, not to split hairs.

Unless you are dry camping, you don't need to carry water (OK, I keep the water heater full, because it's just easier). You also don't need a generator or 2 batteries, as you pointed out. You can't assume that the things you need are the same things someone else needs, and a truck is one of those things in my opinion.

Manufacturers figure weight capacity differently. Some provide more conservative estimates than others. Some sell their vehicles with transmissions that can't carry their vehicles with only a driver aboard for 100,000 miles, let alone reliably pull a trailer on a 2000 mile vacation. None of the manufacturers do a great job in making the critical numbers available to us so that we can make good decisions (if anybody knows of a manufacturer's web site that gives GVWR, GCWR and curb weight for models older than the ones they are currently selling, that company deserves an "attaboy" from us).

Toyota Highlanders and Siennas up through 2007 are unibody vehicles with net carrying capacities of 4500 pounds+ and 3500# rated towing capacities. I believe there's room for a Trailmanor in there somewhere, considering that this is more capacity than some Ford Explorer models are rated for.

Personally, I would rather have a TV with anti-lock brakes that's inside GCWR limits and 500# overweight in the rated towing capacity than an improperly distributed load in a vehicle with 2000# of rated towing capacity to spare.

If any of our other engineers here want to go get the real info and actually figure these things out for us, I'll be glad to help. I sincerely appreciate the real world experience that our owners share here about their TM's and their TV's in their own towing experience. But a lot of the stuff posted here about other people's tow vehicles is usually just speculative and often just plain wrong.

Meanwhile, there's one manufacturer who I think knows a lot about towing these trailers, because they have actually studied it:

"Tow ratings for vehicles should be described as “general guidelines”. Actual towing limits depend on towing speed, highway grades, elevation, desired acceleration, miles towed per year, tow vehicle loading, frontal area of trailer, sway resistance of trailer, etc."

"TrailManor provides uniquely easy towing per pound due to the very low wind drag and the very stable ride resulting from axle placement."

[Mr. Adventure]

Originally Posted by Joseph

" 3500# tow ratings are perfect for 3500# trailers. "

Uhm..... interesting idea....

I had Internet connection trouble (Cox was practicing in the neighborhood, again) just as I posted that. The sentence was supposed to end with the words "under the right conditions."

That's what I like about this forum. There are people here towing with Siennas and have no trouble and then there's the consensus that towing one with a Chrysler mini van is not a good idea for other reasons. There is a lot hair splitting going on as the devil is in the details. Every answer has a "but".

I'm towing with a 180hp short wheelbase truck with 33" tall offroad tires, 3.5" lift, missing rear sway bar and no WDH. I'm breaking a bunch of rules though it does have a 5000lb rating. I'm able to do that safely (I hope) because of several "buts". The key is knowing the limits for each setup and as others have said, where you are towing too. General guidelines just don't always work; which is why it's good to get everyone's input here.

To quote myself:

Just be aware that a 3500 pound trailer weighs 4500 pounds if you have a 1000 pounds of water, options and stuff. It is not unusual for the difference between factory dry weight and actual loaded weight to differ by 1000 pounds.

But, you don't have to carry that much stuff. Leave some at home.

End quote.

What I was trying to say was that if you have a TV capable of towing a 3500 pound trailer, and you have a trailer with a dry weight of 3500 pounds, you could easily find yourself overweight.

If the trailer is 3500 pounds wet and loaded then I see no problem at all.

When I see someone, especially a newbie, say that they just bought a trailer that weighs 3500 pounds, I assume they did not weigh it and only looked at the factory sticker. I also assume that they did not include their stuff.

It can be amazing how much stuff you take with you. I would never have guessed that my stuff weighs 1000 pounds. And that does not include the stuff in the back of the truck, like the generator, firewood, gas, bicycles, portable fire pit, tools, ice chests. If I put all of my stuff in the TM, *I* would be overweight. It is necessary for me to keep some of my stuff in the truck.

Good thing my kids are 24 and 25. When the go with us their stuff s in their cars. I don't have anymore room.

If you don't weight it then you do not know what you have.

But if it doesn't make you nervous driving an unknown mass down mountain grades, go for it. Just leave a lot of room around yourself, just in case your guess was wrong.

I am very conservative. In 1980, while driving my unibody car I was rear ended. The resulting damage was amazing. Total loss. Because of that I am reluctant to tow only with a TV that has a frame. This is my personal choice based on personal experience. I have also personally observed what happens when a boat and its trailer separates from the truck, and snaps the safety chains. I have seen a ski boat in the air when there was no water around.

Clearly my experience is not typical. Therefore, the choices I choose to make are not average.

Yeah, I have a big TV, but it was cheaper than the TM. TM was new, TV was used.

[Mr. Adventure]

- The ways that people use these trailers are impressively different, with not just with different destinations, but also very different loads and different altitude requirements. In the West, we have people driving high in the mountains and camping in unimproved or marginally improved camping areas. In the East people are most often staying in campgrounds with hookups, and only rarely encounter elevations of more than a couple thousand feet. Some people live in their TailManors full time or travel 10,000 miles per year, some people use them 5 nights and a few hundred miles per year.

- There are different needs for tow vehicles because of this. One man's rig is another man's misery.

- A tow vehicle and trailer can be overloaded if you are not careful about what you take along and what you tow it with. It's hard not to have your TrailManor weigh in at the MFR's brochure number plus 500 pounds, and it's easy to put another several hundred pounds aboard.

- A weight distributing hitch is mandatory for lighter tow vehicles.

- The only way to know exactly what you are towing is to weigh your vehicles when they are loaded for the road, by axle, in hitched and unhitched configurations if you use a WDH.

- Towing in every case needs to be approached with an abundance of caution, with reduced speeds and greater following distances than the way one might drive otherwise.

- Towing is a complicated business because the guidelines are not as black and white as we would like them to be. Know your rated specifications.

- Safety is ultimately about your own decisions: How you drive, What you drive, How you pack, Where you choose to go. It's not how fast you can go, it's how fast you can stop that counts.

I towed my 2720SL for about a year and a half with an Explorer Sport Trac, then traded it for an F-150 Crew Cab with factory heavy duty tow package. Although the Sport Trac would tow the TM just fine, most of the time, the steep grades on the way to places such as Golden Gate Park, or the 7% grades in places such as Rabbit Ears Pass were a problem going up, and a little uncomfortable coming down, sometimes. Keep in mind that, besides loading up the TM, I also had the Sport Trac bed nearly full, and the back seat somewhat loaded, as well (gear, not people).

There was actually one spot going to Golden Gate where I nearly couldn't keep going, even in first gear. I was actually on the verge of having to stop and put the Sport Trac in low range in order to get up the hill (there was no immediate place to turn around). At Rabbit Ears (eastbound U.S. 40), I was constantly in first gear going up, and it felt as though I was straining the transmission (no actual evidence, though).

Going down grades such as these, I was concerned about extended braking, and about what would happen should I have to make an emergency stop or, worse yet, an emergency maneuver with the TM on the back.

So although I never saw any actual damage to the vehicle from the steep grades, and I didn't actually experience any emergencies during this time, I elected to go to the F-150 for peace of mind, if nothing else (the potential problems in emergencies got to me).

I went with the crew cab because of the extra seating space (or storage if I wanted that).

Obviously you have to evaluate your own situation, but I thought I'd throw in my outlook for your consideration. It really IS a lot more comfortable (mentally) with the F-150.