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by kortilla 651 days ago
Anyone who thinks large pickup trucks are only for “commercial use” is a knuckle-dragging city-dweller. Now that we both have the name calling out of the way, how would you suggest I tow my utility trailer without a truck?
3 comments

> Now that we both have the name calling out of the way, how would you suggest I tow my utility trailer without a truck?

Congratulations on being part of the 7% that uses their pickup truck to tow "regularly":

* https://www.axios.com/ford-pickup-trucks-history

As opposed to the 63% who self report rarely/never, and 29% occasionally.

For your question, the first detail of import would be what weight capacity do you need to handle?

* https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/articles/best-minivans-towing

15,000 pounds
People in Europe manage to tow large double axle caravans using standard cars.
Those are mostly empty
This misses the point and it's why talking about cars is so annoying if you're a person who doesn't give a shit about cars.

How often do you tow your utility trailer? If you do it every day because you need it for work, then having a big truck probably makes sense.

But if you're like many people who have trucks, you probably do this once a year, if ever, but still feel like you "need" a truck for these occasions.

It's like the people in Australia who live in the outback and need to drive 800km every few weeks to drive to a town to buy supplies. Yeh, sure, maybe a diesel ute with a 200L tank is the right choice for you. But it doesn't mean EVs are a complete waste of time for the 90 percent of Australians that live in cities.

Most people aren't hauling around a trailer every minute.

> How often do you tow your utility trailer? If you do it every day because you need it for work, then having a big truck probably makes sense.

Nope.

We're in Australia, we have a 35 year old home over built double axle heavy steel frame trailer built to handle off road conditions in the north west; it's got heavy duty leaf springs, slaved brakes, can take some serious load tonnage and gets used weekly (still, and has dome for 35+ years).

It gets pulled by a six cylinder sedan car with a Hayman-Reese tow point and tracking anti sway bars.

It's done well in excess of 3 million km now (been stripped down to frame and rebuilt twice now (new wiring, new brakes, refurb'd springs, etc)).

Don't need a big "truck" (oversized Toorak Tractor).

Well, save for hauling wheat and cattle etc. but we have prime movers + semi trailers for that .. and for fire fighting we have an ex military heavy chassis truck modified to carry 5 tonne of water off road .. but that's a bigger beast than US SUV "trucks".

That is awesome.