[Ecobalt]

We towed the trailer home from Canada in April with our new Silverado double cab pickup truck with the new aluminum 5.3 liter V8 engine. The owners manual said to tow at 50 mph for the first 500 miles. We obeyed. The DCM said that we got 11 mpg including the day when we towed in a fierce crosswind and flurries with <10 mpg.

Last month, we towed 220 miles from Cleveland to Black Moshannon State Park, PA. Half of that trip was one mountain after another as we crossed the Allegheny Mountains. The ECM and the adaptive control on the six speed transmission found just the right amount of torque in every condition. This truck automatically selects "trailer mode" if it detects that it is towing a large trailer: it never did towing this trailer, though. It did downshift and spin at 4000 rpms on a few occasions, but it was not roaring as one would have expected with a drivetrain from previous decades.

The trip was 220 miles, 11,000 feet of climbing, and we achieved 13.2 mpg according to the DCM. We drove at 55 to 59 mph. I drove that route dozens of times and kept speeds of 55 to 65 mph typically in my little car. The foolhardy legislators of PA actually raised the speed limit to 70 mph on a few stretches of the mountains.

We towed with a Reese Pro-series equalizing hitch and sway damper. That truck with its long wheelbase and leaf springs really kept the double axle trailer in control. Contemporary trucks and large SUVs have yaw detectors that detect sway and control the braking system to prevent trailer sway. There were just a few cases when trucks overtook me and I could detect sway in the steering response. Those were tandem "double" trucks and the drivers were also foolhardy.

This trailer has an aerodynamically dirty roof with three vents, an air conditioner, a refrigerator vent, an antenna and a solar panel. To smooth all that, one might fabricate a fairing at the leading edge was almost as tall as the air conditioner. I also want to dream up some wheel fairings. As for the rear, I cannot imagine a folding fairing that would not block the rear window. We use that window for ventilation when sleeping.