Do you use a trailer with your car?

[Ryland]

I have a trailer hitch on my Civic VX and use it to tow a small 10 foot long by 4.5 foot wide flat bed trailer and have found that while towing that trailer on the interstate and around town I still get 39-40mpg, much better then I could with a pick up truck and for things like 12 foot long sheets of drywall I would still need a trailer even if I had a pickup truck, I still barrow a pickup truck for hauling dirt, gravel and other loads that would end up weighing more then my Civic does, but for hauling dry wall, lumber, trash and other bulky items it works great!
I started thinking more about this while talking to a friend of mine about trailers as he had a small one for his ridding lawn mower and towed it with his Toyota Avalon and was telling me that his daughter wanted to get one as well to tow behind her Chevy Malibu.
So what kind of trailers do the rest of you use and what do you do with them? are you able to eliminate the use of a pickup truck all together?

[dcb]

Yah, got a cheap 4x8 for the saturn. Small car + trailer is the best off both worlds.

I have a trailer for the bike too

[wagonman76]

Back in 1998 I built a 4x8 enclosed trailer to tow behind my 6000 wagon. Only got 16.5 mpg towing, but that's about what a full size pickup would get everyday. When not towing I would get 30 mpg highway. It looked cool too, like a doghouse.

In 2000 I lent it to one of my coworkers and it got totaled by a half-asleep semi driver, it saved their lives too because it absorbed the impact. I took the insurance money and bought a Haulmark 5x8 which I still use today. When the old 6000 wagon rusted out, I started towing it with my Trans Sport van. I also use the van to tow my 16 ft camper a few times a year. I put electrohydraulic disc brakes on both my trailers too, to keep things safer.

[bluetwo]

People are going to disagree with me but I say keep it at Class 1 towing for anything less than a mid size car. I understand it's possible to tow a trailer around but really, the U-Haul guys have it right when you look at their policies about what they will and wont let you rent.

I remember a Del Sol I saw once that had a tiny little trailer hooked up once, kind of like the trailer you might see a Goldwing pulling and thought - wow, that's actually not a bad idea for a little car with no room in it. So to a degree I recommend it but it has to be small and reasonable for the car in my opinion. Cars with very little capacity and NO tow rating at all are the ones I say definitely be careful with.

[Istas]

I've never towed a trailer in my life, but I agree with bluetwo. From the standpoint of not knowing anything about towing, it makes sense to me that you won't want to pull close to equal the car's weight if it's not a decent sized or purpose-built vehicle.

Also, I've read on here that, with the right size and shape trailer, designed to work with the vehicle in question, that it's possible to improve fuel economy, even with a load. In fact I might even consider getting and modifying a trailer to do just that, if I drove a lot of highway miles. It would be less... complicated, and risky, than building a full boat tail.

[bluetwo]

Since it kinda came up I'd like to see what people think about the aero of this "U-Haul Sport Trailer"

http://www.prowleronline.com/ubb/ima...prowler12t.jpg

It may be posted somewhere else already but things are kind of hard to find sometimes!

[Istas]

It's better than a box, but there's easy things they could have done, wheel skirts and corners along the trailing edge of the sides (rather than curved transition to the back) being the first two I could think of, small deflectors in front of the wheels would have been exceedingly easy too. But again, an improvement over "let's stick a rectangular prism back there".

[MadisonMPG]

Pic is dead.

[Istas]

Works for me.

[MadisonMPG]

Originally Posted by Istas

Works for me.

That's probably because it's in your cache. Try alt+f5 and see.