going out to eat
My wife is on board with traveling and camping in an RV. Our concern is that we like to eat out a lot and we like to wander on day trips a lot when we are home. We are concerned that we will be limi...
Forum Discussion
wa8yxm wrote:
When my wife and I were alive we bought sa 38' Class A Gasser. it can tow up to 4,000 pounds (5000 pound hitch but only 4,000 pounds difference between scaled weight of House and Max CGVW rating of 26,000 pounds)
I tow a 2,500 pound 2001 Dodge Neon behind it , added lube pump to keep tranny cool while I tow, Takes me less than 5 minutes (Way way way less) to hook up and "Drop" (2 pins, two safety cables and the 2 brake control Snap Pull Click and done) 8 MPG consist, 25 MPG running out to dinner et-al.
Modern cars do a whole lot better on the "Run around" (like 35 or more MPG)
Think about this 100 miles of Round Running, at 8 MPG is 12.5 Gallons
At 25 it's 4 a savings of 8.5 gallons or about 21 dollars.. It is 17 miles to CDhurch (34 round trip) from where I'm parked. So I drive at least 70 miles a week. The car cost me 2,000 and fitting for towing 2,000 so at 15/week it would take me 266 weeks to pay for the car.. 5 years. I've been driving It will have paid for itself later this year. (I got it summer 2013)
It does depend on specifics but I wouldn't count on a lot of fuel savings pulling a car with a MH over a truck pulling a trailer.
Let's say, you are going for a weekend 100 miles away (200miles round trip) and tour around 200miles once there. Typical MH MPG is reported usually around 6-8 (let's use 7MPG). Towing is usually reported around 8-12MPG (let's use 10MPG) and let's assume the small car would get 35MPG and the truck gets 15MPG not towing.
- MH: MH burns 28.6gal and the car burns 5.7 for a total of 34.3gal for the weekend.
- Trailer: Towing burns 20.0gal and running around burns 13.3gal for a total of 33.3gal.
The more your use tilts towards moving the RV, the better a TT/5th wheel works out for fuel savings but for most it's pretty much a wash for most normal use cases.
Setup and tear down are pretty much a wash assuming you are comparing like for like (ie: if you put self levelers on the MH, you would compare to a 5th wheel with self levelers.)
Ironically, if you don't move a lot, while the MH might work out better for fuel consumption, it's really not good to let the drivetrain sit for long periods.
