Would you tow this trailer home?

[SilverEscape]

We're looking to buy a 2015 Jayco X213 and would be picking it up 6 hours away. To get it home, we'd need to use our MDX. There will be a more capable tow vehicle added to the family, but it's not available at this time so will either use the MDX or not buy the trailer.

Trailer stats:

• Brochure dry weight: 4005 pounds
  
• Brochure tongue weight: 390 pounds
  
• Yellow sticker weight: 4300 pounds
  
• Trailer won't be loaded with any cargo other than a few accessories that are bought like levelling blocks and a few other gadgets. Will need to consider that for tongue weight...maybe carrying water would be enough to make tongue heavy enough? or is tongue already going to be too heavy with trailer weight 4300# in real life?
  

Vehicle stats:

• Towing capacity: 5000 pounds (includes two 150 lb passengers and 15 lbs cargo each and we weigh less than that)
  
• Max tongue weight: 500 pounds
  
• Class III receiver
  
• GVCWR: 10,053 pounds
  
• Weight distribution hitch not recommended
  
• Manual recommends tongue weight of 8-15% for non boat trailers (I know 10 should be minimum, just wanted to point out what the manual says)
  
• Sway control will be there (have to research what to get yet)
  
• Has Trailer Stability Assist feature which uses the VSA feature to determine if a trailer is causing vehicle instability (during sway or oscillation) and then "The control unit sends signals to selectively apply the brakes and regulate the engine output."
  
• Has a Prodigy brake controller
  

Very flat roads, almost nothing for curves either. Will be content with reducing speed to 90 km/hr or lower if need be.

Opinions? And if you think it's doable, any advice or recommendations would be awesome. Thanks!

[SilverEscape]

Cool, I'll go check out the floor plan. Our MDX was also free and clear so didn't make sense to take the hit on our new car. Plus our new car gets about 34 miles per gallon so we'd like to keep it. Ha ha.

Oh, beware the yellow payload sticker inside the driver's door as you are shopping. One truck we looked at had an 1100 pound payload and with with tongue weight and people, we'd be at the payload and have no room for cargo.

[peejaykay]

We're looking at the Eagle premier 284bhbe. It's 6500 dry, 9250 GVWR. Any more trailer than that would be 3/4 ton category and I'm just not ready to bite that bullet right now. Our MDX is great, I would hate to see it go too. It's a '12 and paid off, so the smart financial thing to do would be to trade/sell that and get a truck and keep my fuel efficient diesel BMW but the wife isn't going for that! So now we'll have two guzzlers.

[SilverEscape]

peejaykay wrote:
Haha, we did the same thing. Did a reality check, looked at our family and all of our stuff and decided that the X213 was not large enough and currently looking at trucks and selling my BMW. 😞 Wife won't let the Acura go.

I don't want to let the MDX go but our other car is a 2014 we just bought a few months ago so it would be silly to sell the new one. Our MDX is an '08 so it's been elected. I was used to the luxury of the MDX though so of course I picked a truck with all the creature comforts (heated and cooked front seats and heated rear seats).

What trailer are you going with now? I'm actually glad we don't have a heavier trailer as the payload of our new truck is just over 1500 so with the tongue and people, we still have room for cargo but not as much as I'd thought we'd have. It's lucky we're a light family! I'd either have to drop to a half ton with less goodies or move up to a 3/4 ton to haul a bigger trailer. And a 3/4 ton is too big for the garage (and for little 'ok me to park!).

[peejaykay]

Haha, we did the same thing. Did a reality check, looked at our family and all of our stuff and decided that the X213 was not large enough and currently looking at trucks and selling my BMW. 😞 Wife won't let the Acura go.

[Bucky_Badger]

SilverEscape wrote:
And the end to this saga is that we bought our own truck to tow our trailer and pick it up in a couple days. We'll be selling our SUV.

That is good to know.

[SilverEscape]

And the end to this saga is that we bought our own truck to tow our trailer and pick the truck up in a couple days. We'll be selling our SUV.

[SilverEscape]

peejaykay wrote:
That seems kind of heavy, given they advertise a 330lb dry weight. Unless...

330+80(propane)+batteries/jack(60)+WDH(50) = 520ish

So we loaded it for camping and my hubby took it out to the weight station. Overall trailer weight was about 4900#. Tongue weight is another story. 595 pounds with one not completely full propane tank, NO spare tire and a slightly lighter electric tongue jack (ours was******so dealer replaced it and new one is a 2500# model with narrower tubes so it's lighter). There is about 20# of bedding on the front bunks, a bag of dirty laundry in the wardrobe, 4 towels hanging on the hooks in the bathroom, kitchen cabinets have 6 Corelle plates and bowls (the cheap plain white stuff), 2 pots, one frying pan, some plastic cups, and some other kitche stuff, nothing too outrageous.

We also tried the trailer completely empty with the exception of the bedding on the front bunks to weigh the tongue on a bathroom scale we have that goes to 550# and with only battery, tongue jack (NO propane), the tongue is around 518#. Right around 550# with ONE tank of propane. Even if you carried only the battery, no propane and swapped the tongue jack out for a manual, you'd still be at or slightly over 500#. And where would you put the propane each time anyway?

So I don't see how this trailer could ever be towed on a regular basis with a vehicle that has a 500# max tongue weight. We want to be able to take bikes and such too so tongue weight would only increase.

[SilverEscape]

peejaykay wrote:
That seems kind of heavy, given they advertise a 330lb dry weight. Unless...

330+80(propane)+batteries/jack(60)+WDH(50) = 520ish

They advertise 390 for the 2015 models. And while their yellow sticker weight includes 2 full tanks of propane, I don't believe their advertised tongue weight does. So yes you need to add all of that plus the spare tire which is under the tongue.

[flash82]

peejaykay wrote:
That seems kind of heavy, given they advertise a 330lb dry weight. Unless...

330+80(propane)+batteries/jack(60)+WDH(50) = 520ish

It does seem high. We also have a 500lbs hitch limit and are looking at TT with 350lbs and 400lbs empty. They only have one 20lbs tank though.

Was the spare under the hitch?

[peejaykay]

That seems kind of heavy, given they advertise a 330lb dry weight. Unless...

330+80(propane)+batteries/jack(60)+WDH(50) = 520ish

[SilverEscape]

peejaykay wrote:
What were your weights on the scale?

For some crazy reason I wrote them on a business card laying in the vehicle instead of inputting them into my phone and I can't find that card. Tongue weight was around 575-580 pounds with the trailer virtually empty and with the spare tire, 2 full propane tanks and the power tongue jack. I wish yellow stickers had not only trailer weight, but also tongue weight when it left the factory.

We went and weighed again once we were home for a few days and I put those in my phone. Getting kids to bed now but will get you those in the next day or two.

[peejaykay]

What were your weights on the scale?

[BubbaChris]

SilverEscape wrote:
Well it's home! Gas mileage was terrible. We drove 95 km/hr the whole way home and oddly, almost the entire drive home was slightly uphill for 550km. Not something I'd ever noticed until we were towing a trailer. Ha ha! I think we averaged 21L/100km which translated to somewhere around 11mpg. Travelling the other way would have done much better since it's apparently downhill the whole way. 🙂 We just made it to the halfway point where there was a city to get gas with maybe "10km to empty" on the computer. And then got home with about "30km to empty" on the second tank. Yikes.

Anyway, we bought an Andersen WDH and went to a weigh scale. Adjusting the hitch absolutely did distribute weight as our front axle weight went up and our rear went down. We did not exceed our vehicle axle weight limits, or the GVWR for the vehicle or the trailer or the GCVWR. The tongue was too heavy though which we could tell just by looking. So we pulled the spare tire and the propane tanks for the drive home.

I didn't drive, but it towed very solidly. Much less bumping and banging than with our prior pop-up trailer (which was 3000 pounds loaded and maybe 400 pound tongue weight and we did not use a WDH but maybe should have).

The Milenco Aero 2 mirrors were awesome. My husband was pleased with them.

So cool to see this update!!! Congratulations.

[facory]

Francesca Knowles wrote:

Wes Tausend wrote:
...

I might add here, that folks in the U.S. are a bit overly cautious. Perhaps it is due to the interstate highway system and the tendency to drive faster while towing.
..........snip............

Wes
...

No offense, Wes, but aren't those two statements mutually exclusive? If we were in fact "over cautious"- or even just ordinarily so- we wouldn't go to so much trouble and expense just to tow fast.

As for Andy at CanAm- he'd be the first to tell you to slow down if you want to "tow big with a light vehicle". If the trailer's properly balanced and the speed is kept proportionately low, there's nothin' special about the setup required.

Except maybe between the ears! 🙂

X2