I seem to get lost down Google rabbit holes. Doing research for a travel trailer would find me in a major burrow for two years! I needed to narrow the search.
Some early considerations were excluded. Van modification? There are some extremely talented people on YouTube doing amazing things but I was not up to the challenge. And besides, it seemed to make more sense for us to have a comfortable every day vehicle that could pull a trailer rather than commit to driving our ‘home’ wherever we went. No van for us – but props to those who make it work!
Truck or SUV? This was never really a choice for us – I add it here to almost sound cool. Again, the choice for a comfortable and more fuel efficient vehicle ruled the day.
I had been happily driving a 2006 Toyota Highlander Hybrid for over 300K miles so logically we looked to see if a new Highlander would meet our needs. From my initial research into possible travel trailers I knew that our towing vehicle would need to have at a minimum, 5000 pounds of towing capacity and be able to handle 500 pounds of tongue weight. Tongue weight? What the heck was that? Well whatever it was I was going to need 500 pounds of it! (more on tongue weight later…).
In order to get the 5000 towing and 500 tongue weight capacities required for the some time in the future trailer purchase, we had to focus on a Highlander gas model. If we went with a Highlander Hybrid model that had the capability to pull any travel trailer we were considering, we would not be able to afford a travel trailer!!
Meet our 2023 Highlander AWD, with 5000 pounds of towing capacity, 500 pounds tongue weight capacity and a rear bench seat for the dog!
I won’t bore you with the car salesman stories…