Rant - looking for a travel trailer

[johnsoax]

I wish some manufacturer made the trailer I was looking for. I have 4 children, and I use a SUV to carry the family. And from all the threads I constantly see here, and on other sites, I'm not the only one looking.

Right now I use a popup to fit everyone and still be able to carry all the gear we need. And for the type of camping we do, it is annoying to have to setup and tear down every day as we travel to our destination. Then when we are at our destination, we have to do a smaller setup and tear down everyday to convert tables and couches to beds to fit everyone.

Someone should be able to design a trailer that will give me 3 or 4 individual beds for the kids and a larger bed for my wife and I while still letting us have our gear for less than 550 lbs of tongue weight.

My vehicle is a pretty typical SUV that has a 550lb tongue weight and a towing capacity of 7700. Once I put all the gear in a trailer, I can pull the weight, but everything that has a floor plan we can use has a tongue weight that requires a 2500 or 3500 truck to pull it, before the gear is even in the trailer.

Why can't someone make something for larger families that fits the smaller vehicles that most people drive nowadays.

I know there are Hybrid trailers. If I wanted to deal with tenting issues, I would stay with the popup.

We want to be able to have a nice base camp for destination camping and be able to stop at places on the way there to make lunch/use the bathroom/ and sleep in the camper without deploying everything (stealth road camping).

Airstream used to build something like this, but they have gone $$$ high end, and super heavy. I can find much older trailers that might work, if I could actually find one for sale...

Anyone have any ideas?

[qtla9111]

OP, stick with it and don't give up. The naysayers are in abundance. I was told my 98 Pathfinder V6 couldn't tow squat. It towed three rvs for over 12 years and took it to 465,000 kms and I sold it to a neighbor who still drives it and hasn't had any issues. It towed like a charm.

Your rv is out there, it's just a matter of time. Remember, very few if any on this forum are experts. We all offer our opinions based on experience and knowledge of some kind. And we all know what they say about opinions and that includes mine.

[gmw_photos]

RedRocket204 wrote:
Buy a class A and toad the LR. The LR is going to have to be towed at some point anyway.

The first sentence is good advice. The second one is just plain funny.

[dodge_guy]

tbred wrote:
I do believe Elvis has left the building.

And they took my post with them!

[2012Coleman]

tbred wrote:
I do believe Elvis has left the building.

Score one one more for the wolf pack...

[tbred]

I do believe Elvis has left the building.

[RedRocket204]

Buy a class A and toad the LR. The LR is going to have to be towed at some point anyway.

[dhawken]

I have been curious about these:

http://escapetrailer.com/

They seem really well built and the reviews are great. They also appear to be individually made based on a customer order - you configure the thing exactly how you want. Maybe its possible to get triple bunks put in somewhere.

[GrandpaKip]

I am certainly glad that I did not find this forum and ask for advice when I was looking for a camper. I guess that I would have been seen as arrogant by many here, if I had stated that I was not going to change my TV and then listed what I wanted in a camper. So many non-constructive comments, kinda disheartening, except for the humorous ones.
To the OP, keep searching. Took me a while and I filled up a notebook. Search all of Craigslist, all the trader type mags, etc. to find the model you want. Have you considered redoing a 2 bunk model into a 3 bunk?
Good luck.

[dodge_guy]

Yes, but we all still piled into that train, just to see the outcome at the end, which of course is what we all seen coming, but we wanted to be prt of it anyway!

[flash82]

SoundGuy wrote:

Dakota98 wrote:
The answer was on page # 1,

Of course you had to read 9 more to get here. :B

This thread has TRAIN WRECK written all over it ... because of the OP's argumentative and unwavering position we all knew where it was going and what the result would be. Such a waste of everyone's time when as you say the answer already appeared way back on Page 1 before the train even pulled out of the station. :S

That's the beauty of the net... you are not FORCED to read or respond to this. Just 'switch the channel'

[SoundGuy]

Dakota98 wrote:
The answer was on page # 1,

Of course you had to read 9 more to get here. :B

This thread has TRAIN WRECK written all over it ... because of the OP's argumentative and unwavering position we all knew where it was going and what the result would be. Such a waste of everyone's time when as you say the answer already appeared way back on Page 1 before the train even pulled out of the station. :S

[Dakota98]

The answer was on page # 1,

Of course you had to read 9 more to get here. :B

[Fnp5150]

I went through the same problem. My family is 3 adults and 3 kids age 8 and under. We use an Expedition to tow. We bought a Jayco Featherlight 26' that weighs 4500lbs dry, 5500 loaded out completely. It has a master with a queen bed, 2 double bed sized bunks that each support 600 pounds, a pull out couch, and a convertible dinette. That makes 5 beds total. We usually don't even need to use the couch or dinette.

[captnjack]

johnsoax wrote:

dodge guy wrote:
You have to bend a little bit here. You are not going to find what you want, especially considering that you will not give one inch either way. Something has to give and at this point it is your LR. Put a real hitch on it and you will open up a whole new world of trailers that fit your needs!

The ONLY compromise you keep offering is to change my Tow vehicle. I will make many other compromises, but that one isn't one of them.

I'm staggered by the people who think that my "needs" are not being met by a vehicle that meets every need I have ever asked it to do except pull a travel trailer with a ridiculous tongue weight....

Yet, I have been told by 10 people that my needs are no longer met by it. Staggeringly arrogant.

If I can't find a TT that will work, my rant stands that manufacturers are ignoring a large potential market of mid size SUV's, and I won't buy one. Easy as that.

And my comment before about not understanding tongue weights obviously needs expanded for those with a more limited mental capacity. People have posted all sorts of TT in this thread, and the tongue weights are all over the place. A toy hauler that has the bathroom and the kitchen (arguably the heaviest parts of a TT) in the front of a trailer has a lighter tongue weight than a trailer with both of those items at the axles or further back. That is crazy, and is purely a design issue that manufacturers are not worried about, because people are just told to buy a "real tow vehicle" to use it.

You're not being fully honest here in saying changing the tow vehicle is the only compromise you won't entertain. Unless I've missed something, you won't even really entertain changing the location of the spare tire in order to put on a WDH that would solve your problem very easily.

[johnsoax]

badercubed wrote:
http://www.trailertoad.com/

Done

That is pretty interesting... Thanks.