Help how heavy of a trailer can i pull

Drum wrote:
I really don't see the harm in towing a 2500 lb trailer with a 3500 lb minivan if it's properly equipped and weight limits are observed when loading. You've gotta pay attention to the weights even if you're towing a 10,000 trailer with a F350 diesel by the time you get in the motorcycle and gym equipment or whatever. It's all relative. You can't generally stuff as much into a little 2500 lb TT. They're making much lighter weight trailers these days, so I think it's possible.

Many vehicles now days are not and were never intended to tow a large billboard (aka hard sided trailer). They were given such a light rating to allow folks to use small landscape trailers or tow their "personal watercraft" trailer.

Once you hang a hard sided trailer behind which WILL have considerable frontal area all those ratings go out the door. Even small hard sided trailers will have a good 6ft wide by 4 ft of frontal area. This is 24 square feet of area to catch the wind.

Basically towing a hard sided trailer is like pushing a load of cement blocks without any wheels under them.

Even a trailer which weighs in at 2500 lbs ACTUAL lbs will be at or above 3,500 lbs once you add in your personal stuff not to mention any passengers, gas or any other stuff loaded into the tow vehicle.

Often times mini vans also tend to get loaded with more than one passenger, so you need to take that into account.

My personal take on this comes from my own experience of towing using a vehicle which was rated at 3,500 lbs. While I didn't tow a TT I did tow a utility trailer and let me tell you it was never fun to tow with.

After buying a truck and EXPERIENCING the difference I can NEVER recommend that anyone tows with a vehicle with that light of a rating. The truck took command of that utility trailer, before the trailer PUSHED my vehicle around.

I have as of yet EVER heard anyone say that they have TOO much tow vehicle, but LOTS who COMPLAIN that they need to modify their too close to ratings vehicle to make it work better.

Add up the costs of springs, shocks and other suspension upgrades plus adding additional transmission cooler it can get expensive in a hurry and you still have a vehicle which is just not going to tow well.

I SKIPPED buying a travel trailer for quit a few years, instead I put money back to buy a tow vehicle which HAS been purposely built to tow and already HAS the ratings to tow more than 3,500 lbs.

Do yourself a favor, don't bother using that mini van for towing, just not worth the time or hassle.