[stillsearching]

It's easy to get mileage if all you have to move around is a couple of people, but people who actually have to haul heavy or bulky things can have alot more difficulty. In general as weight goes up so does efficiency - a semi tractor gets maybe 5mpg, but when it moves 40,000 pounds that's better than a Geo Metro towing 1000lbs and making 40 trips by a long shot.


I'm trying to find places related to the above, which don't really seem to fit into conventional towing boards, and don't really fit into conventional economy boards. :P Examples of topics:
- modifications to let smaller vehicles do heavier towing SAFELY, for instance I would love to beef up a miniature pickup to do a job more suited to what a 3/4 ton normally does. I've also seen custom CAD designed weight distributing hitches allowing a specific compact car to safely move 3500lb trailers in the mountains. Because the normal advice is "get a full size pickup" such things are not common knowledge, nor generally promoted, yet it's probably safer than full size pickups pulling multiple times their weight alot of the time.
- unconventional tow vehicles that either due to careful selection or special construction can tow beyond what others in their class are able to move. An example could be like the 1980's El Camino with the aerodynamics of a car (albeit boxy) yet a full frame and towing ability beyond FWD vehicles, plus in some cases a factory diesel engine exceeding 30mpg unladen.
- general strategies for moving what may be widely varying weights or loads, for instance off grid homes or small farms where periodic heavy loads like multiple cords of firewood or bags of cement are common enough to make rental impractical yet infrequent enough to make owning superduty diesels or big rigs impractical. You might need to tow a 5000lb farm tractor too but I don't see why this should require single digit mpg.


As an example of my own interests and needs i'm trying to plan an off grid self sufficient commune of sorts, which will regularily do the "reuse recycle" bit by taking others castoffs and making something useful with it. This is only feasible if the transport, fuel, and maintenance costs are low enough. Load sizes will vary radically from light and bulky (like reusing 4 inch thick styrofoam sheets) to heavy and dense (like scrap steel), and the total cost of the "transport infrastructure" stands in the way of making most of it work if we simply stick to "conventional" answers.