Choosing our tow vehicle (Part 1)

So when Heather says we spent two years researching our tow vehicle and our trailer, she's not kidding.  It became our favorite pastime.  There are a staggering number of RV manufacturers in the United States, far more than there are auto manufacturers.  Each RV manufacturer can offer a different set of brand names, and each brand name can feature a wide array of models.  So once Heather and I knew we wanted a towable travel trailer (called a "camper" by anybody not researching RVs), we began to face two very conflicting questions:

• What travel trailer did we want?
• How much could we tow?

So while Heather was checking out floorplan after floorplan online, I started educating myself on the basics of towing.  I read blogs.  Online forums.  Books, both in physical and electronic format.  I read success stories and horror stories.  I watched YouTube videos of trailers and their tow vehicles being blown off the highway by high winds.  What I learned began to congeal into the following 10 rules of thumb, which were echoed by everyone I spoke to who had experience towing.

1. The tail should never wag the dog.  The tow vehicle has to be sized to the trailer, and "pushing the limits" of a tow vehicle is not a good idea.
2. Auto manufacturers regularly overstate their vehicle's tow capacities.
3. RV manufacturers regularly understate their trailer's weight.
4. Any trailer weighing over 3000 pounds features electric brakes, which requires a brake controller in the tow vehicle.  Auto manufacturers who are serious about their vehicles towing a trailer over 3000 pounds pre-wire them for brake controllers, so that they are simple to install.  (The converse is also true: Auto manufacturers who are NOT serious about their vehicles towing a trailer over 3000 pounds do NOT pre-wire them for brake controllers.)
5. Any trailer weighing over 3000 pounds generally benefits from a "weight distribution hitch," some of which come with "anti-sway" functionality.  You want a weight distribution hitch with anti-sway functionality.  Generally not a good idea to pinch pennies here.
6. Body-on-frame construction is generally preferred in a tow vehicle, for a number of reasons.  Towing with a unibody vehicle will raise the eyebrows of every gray-haired towing veteran on the road (who are sometimes referred to as members of the "towing mafia").  Upon meeting these gray-haired towing vets at a rest stop with a trailer proudly behind your unibody tow vehicle, they will politely inquire as to your destination, sincerely wish you well, and then give you a wide berth on the highway.
7. Body-on-frame construction SUVs are a dying breed.  "Crossover" SUVs are very much en vogue these days because of great fuel economy, ride comfort, and overall versatility.  Every crossover SUV is also by definition a unibody design.
8. There are about 10 different weights and capacities that you need to pay attention to when matching a tow vehicle to a trailer.  Dry weight, GVWR, GCWR, hitch weight, GAWR... the list goes on.  The bottom line here is that your tow vehicle needs to be able to tow your trailer fully loaded with all of your camping gear, carrying two tanks of propane on the tongue, with its fresh water tank full of water, with your family and dog seated in the tow vehicle, up a mountain facing 30 mph headwinds, all without breaking too much of a sweat.  If you find yourself compromising on any of the above criteria ("Oh, I'll just pack light.") you will again start getting stern looks from the aforementioned gray-haired towing mafia.
9. No auto manufacturer advertises a vehicle's fuel economy when towing.  The reason for this?  Fuel economy sucks when towing.  Regardless of tow vehicle.
10. You can pull onto the RV lot driving a Mini Cooper, and the RV dealer will try to convince you that it can pull a 30 foot trailer.  You are entirely on your own when it comes to determining what a given tow vehicle can tow safely (first) and comfortably (second).  Do your homework.
11. Bonus rule: Never tow a trailer in high winds.  Ever.

So after all this research, where did we stand?  Well, we owned a 2012 Toyota Highlander V6 4WD with the optional towing package.  We honestly had to dig out the window sticker to confirm this, and I even went to the trouble of popping the hood and visually verifying the auxiliary oil cooler.  Why is this important?  Because with the towing package, Toyota claims the Highlander can tow up to 5000 pounds.  That's a lot for a V6 SUV.   At first I was ecstatic, as all of the trailers we were looking at weighed between 2500-4500 pounds dry.  We could tow them with our Highlander!

Or could we?  I first started having doubts when I began to Google search phrases like "Highlander towing travel trailer experiences."  I found at least two different accounts of potential travel trailer buyers initially asking for towing advice on various forums.  "I want trailer X, can I tow it with my Highlander?"  Mixed responses from the forum members.  "The Highlander is a crossover, I'd be worried towing anything over 2500 pounds with a unibody."  "No tow-haul mode, your transmission will probably spend a lot of time hunting... you might have to keep it in fourth gear."  "Get a good brake controller."

That led me to start researching brake controllers.  How complicated would they be to install in the Highlander?  That's when I learned the difference between a 4-pin trailer wiring harness (which my Highlander already had) and a 7-pin wiring harness.  I learned that trailers with brakes required a 7 pin harness for the proper braking signals to be passed from the brake controller in the tow vehicle to the brakes in the trailer.  Ok... so I needed to upgrade to a 7 pin wiring harness and install a brake controller.  How hard could that be?

Well, it turns out that if you work on cars regularly and are fully comfortable modifying your vehicle's electrical system, it's not that hard at all.  I was neither of those things.  So, I was going to have to pay somebody to run the proper wiring and install a brake controller.  How invasive would that be?  Would that void my warranty from Toyota?  I got different answers from different sources.  Most people agreed that if a vehicle was pre-wired for a brake controller, it wouldn't void the vehicle's warranty.  Some people even called Toyota to ask, and those poor souls often got conflicting answers from different Toyota dealers or customer service representatives.

Bottom line: the Highlander isn't pre-wired for a brake controller.  It's only pre-wired for the 4-pin trailer wiring harness, which includes brake lights... but no actual brakes.  Which makes no sense at all, considering that all trailers over 3000 pounds feature electric brakes and require a brake controller.  The Highlander with the tow package is rated to tow up to 5000 pounds, so why wouldn't it be pre-wired for a brake controller and 7-pin wiring harness?  Other Toyota SUVs like the 4Runner and Sequoia are pre-wired...

That's when I learned about unibody construction versus body-on-frame construction.  The more I researched, the more I began to realize that there were very few "crossover" SUVs on the market pre-wired for brake controllers and 7-pin trailer wiring harnesses.  In fact, I could only find two: the brand-new 2013 Nissan Pathfinder and the Jeep Grand Cherokee.  Now, I did not perform an exhaustive search by any means, so I'm sure there exist other unibodies out there ready for serious towing.  But model after model, manufacturer after manufacturer a pattern began to appear in my research: the vast majority of vehicles that actually featured factory-installed 7-pin wiring harnesses and brake controller pre-wires were trucks and full-size SUVs.  Virtually all of those were body-on-frame designs.  None of them were my 2012 Highlander.

So I had to ask myself, "Why would Toyota put 7-pin wiring harnesses and brake controller pre-wires in the Tacoma pickup, the 4Runner SUV, the full-size Sequoia SUV, and the full-size Tundra pickup... but not the Highlander?"  Not only did they not offer them in the Highlander, they wouldn't install them even if you tried to pay them to.  Toyota simply didn't want anything to do with brake controllers in the Highlander, according to most of the posts I read.  Since a brake controller requires a direct connection to a tow vehicle's battery, I read stories of people having to drill through the Highlander's firewall to run the proper cabling.  Others got creative, and found existing cable runs and grommets with just enough space to pull the cable through (this sometimes led into healthy debates over the proper gauge cable to use).  In either case, owners had to install additional fuses in order to power the controller.

I pondered this situation for months.  I read accounts of people who had installed brake controllers and 7-pin harnesses in their Highlanders.  I followed their forum posts as they joyously ordered a 17, 18, or 19 foot travel trailer (some of the very same models Heather and I were considering), and departed in their modified Highlanders to go pick them up from the dealer.  "Hooray!" they seemed to proclaim.  "Today I pick up my new trailer!  I'll post again as soon as I tow it home!"

And then reality set in.  The next forum post I'd read from these very same individuals after their first towing experience in the Highlander was always sobering.  I heard three common themes, echoed over and over.

1. Single digit gas mileage, and the transmission hunted for an appropriate gear constantly.  Manual control of the transmission was almost always required.
2. Towing a "hard walled" trailer of the type Heather and I were interested in, even with a properly configured weight distribution hitch with anti-sway, made for a very different ride feel in the Highlander.
3. Lots of white knuckle moments on the road.

Some of these guys began actively questioning their decision to tow a hard walled trailer with the Highlander on the various forums I was reading.  This broke my heart, I really felt for these guys.  I was on the precipice of making the same type of decision, and I wasn't finding a lot of good news.  Story after story, forum after forum, towing a hard walled with the Highlander just didn't seem like a good idea.

I kept coming back to the 7-pin wiring harness and brake controller pre-wire.  I finally said to Heather one night over dinner, "I just can't believe they'd rate it to tow 5000 pounds and not pre-wire it for a brake controller."  Heather had already made up her mind.  "Honey, it's pretty clear Toyota doesn't endorse towing a trailer that requires a brake controller with the Highlander," she told me.  "If they did, it would have the pre-wires."  I could not find fault with that logic.

If you're reading this and you're pulling a high-waller with a V6 Highlander, good on ya.  I'm sure you've found a comfort zone.  Myself?  I just wasn't willing to try it.