My wife and I are aiming to break all of our belongings down as minimally as we can in order to be able to live on the road for a while (for a multitude of reasons.)
Within our budget and needs, we’ve decided on a NuCamp 320 teardrop trailer, which clocks in at ~2k lbs unloaded, 3,000 lbs max load. Her, myself and two pups all weigh 300 lbs together. Optimally, we’d like to start with just the vehicle first, and trailer later on as an upgrade.
We were initially looking at a toyota 4runner to pair with this given the advertised 1550 lbs of potential cargo capacity and tongue weight of the hitch. However in practicality, we saw no more than a max capacity of 880 lbs period in the door jams at the dealerships. Even in the off-road models, which just seemed… asinine? Using some calculators, that would seemingly give us very little-to-no wiggle room for any proper amount of livable necessities before we cross that threshold and run into myriad issues.
Now we’re wondering how people actually do it? Are we overthinking it? We did love the vehicle, but these numbers are waaay too close for comfort, seeing as most advice we find online generally recommends not crossing ~80% of the big number. We’ve begun looking at land cruisers as an alternative, but the way the market is right now, and the difference in cost for both new and used, it’s looking more and more infeasible. Don’t even get me started on the GX550.
Have you been through a similar situation? Any advice would be appreciated! 🤍
Edit for future visitors:
We ended up settling on a ‘22 Toyota Highlander XLE, and honestly we’re pretty excited about it! Even with an electric tow hitch, it clocks in at a healthy 1,390 lbs of cargo capacity, with even more room in the back to camp out of. That number will go down a decent bit with some rooftop storage, and maybe back up a little bit if we can (viably) take out the third row seating. But it more than suits our current needs as it stands 🥳
Thanks to the general good advice in the comments, we’ve put the idea of an RV at all on ice, transitioning to a more all-inclusive portable action plan. There were too many ways things could go wrong lugging one at such long distances for the timeframe of our trips. However, we’re really happy to be able to upgrade to that setup at any time we’d like to!
I knew a guy who bought a small truck (30 years ago) and towed well over rated weight, he got where he was going 200 miles down the road and when he parked over some weeds they started on fire from his overheated transmission, truck was totaled - manufecture denighed warranty coverage and is insurance refused to cover it. they were making payments for a while an a truck that was scrapped.
that’s called “don’t park in weeds dumbass” and not the fault of the vehicle or even the load itself. Manufacturer justified in denying any kind of warranty.
Any vehicle will do that, even passenger cars well under the weight rating, it’s the exhaust and cats running at 600F+ that start dry brush on fire. It is physically impossible for a transmission to get hot enough to set stuff on fire itself before it will completely fail internally.
The exhaust could be a problem but this is clearly the transmission which should noteget that hot. Fire investigators traced the fire to hot transmission fluid leaking from seals that failed because of temperature.
No, it’s called don’t tow more than your vehicle is made to handle you moron, but you wouldn’t understand that
Yeah that guy is just a fucking idiot that puts everyone around them in danger.