If you didn’t already own an adequate vehicle to tow a new trailer or fifth wheel you purchased, chances are you had to buy one. Most RVers know that an underpowered tow vehicle will not do the job properly and can even pose a danger. Are we right?
RV salesmen will sometimes tell you, when asked if your present tow vehicle is adequate, that it is perfectly fine for towing your new rig. But they can often be far more interested in their commission than your RVing experience after your purchase.
So when you bought your RV, did you buy a new vehicle to tow it? Or were you all set, with no need to spend what can be a lot of money these days on a vehicle substantial enough to tow something as long and heavy as some trailers and fifth wheels.
Of course, plenty of RVers were already driving a capable pickup or SUV before they ever started shopping for an RV. Others found themselves stretching the limits of their current vehicle or discovering—sometimes after the purchase—that the numbers just didn’t add up. Tow ratings, payload capacity, and hitch weight can be confusing, and many buyers don’t realize how important those figures are until they’re deep into the buying process.
If you did, indeed, buy a new vehicle, please leave a comment and tell us about your experience including what vehicle you bought and why you chose (or had) to buy it. Please be as specific as you can.
As always, thank you for voting in this survey.
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RVDT2936
Poll should include a “non-towable” selection for everyone else.
The poll is only about towables and tow vehicles.
Why include anything else?
Those are a completely different class of RV’s.
The poll was not intended for you. Move on.
Bought the vehicle, then the trailer, then after a year decided the vehicle was too close to its limits, so upgraded. In this case, the 2024 Tacoma with a turbo-4 and 8-speed pulls way easier than the 2023 with a V6 and 6-speed. The 2024 takes a hitch weight of 1200 lb, where the 2023 took 940 lb, and that makes a big difference as well.
Depends which RV.
We bought our 2020 Subaru Ascent with its 5,000 pound towing before we found our small TT. After the little used unit we started with, we knew what we wanted and now have about 15K miles on our 2022 TT.
But for our big 2017 TT, we never owned a vehicle to tow it. Bought new in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and commercially moved to Texas as a seasonal residence. We recently sold that TT with about 2K miles on it, and purchased a RV Park Model (tiny home style). It weighs 12 tons and will seldom, if ever, be relocated – but it is truly an RV and can be moved with little preparation.
2020 Ford F250 Super Duty, 6.7 diesel, trailer package. Tows great, truck now 61k miles, 2021GD Reflection 303RLS 28k miles
Like so many way back when, we had a car and later bought a towable. Then we moved to a van and the same towable. Then upgraded the towable. Then another van and a different towable. THEN, we went to a fifth wheel and that required a tow vehicle, a truck, to match the needs so that was a specific purchase.
I needed to check two boxes–before and after. We bought the first truck just before ordering our travel trailer, but had already matched them before buying either. We bought our big truck after we ordered our fifth wheel, but only because our original, special-order truck wasn’t delivered in the promised 6 months after we ordered it (the brand shall remain anonymous). So, we went to a dealer and bought a new 3/4-ton, 4×4, crew-cab, diesel truck off the lot for the same price as our previously ordered, gasoline-engine truck. Best deal and most comfortable truck of the 6 I have owned over a 55-year period!
We knew that we were going to purchase a fifth wheel toy hauler, and after looking at several different models, it made our decision on what truck we wanted to pull it simple. We found the truck before we found the RV.
We have had 4 towables, 2 popups, and 2 small TTs. We used the 4Runner we’d used on the last popup for the first TT, for a little over a season. We up-sized after that, while it worked on paper, the 4Runner was stressed under some conditions. Our ’17 Silverado 1500 worked great for that TT, and now for our new Escape 19.
We looked at TTs for over a year before finding the one that we both liked. Then bought the vehicle before purchasing the RV. The RV dealer made sure we had an adequate truck before the sale. I appreciated their attitude and attention to detail to make sure we were safe.
I marked no, but I’m cheating a little. We currently have a Class A, but it is way more than we need for our weekend dog trial use. We are actively shopping for a small trailer that we can tow behind our 2019 Toyota 4Runner