The title of this article is well known as it relates to the chicken and the egg. Well, I ask you, what came first? The Travel Trailer or the Tow Vehicle. For me it was the Travel Trailer and then out of necessity the Tow Vehicle. Maybe it’s just me, but I had to learn the hard way that some RV salesmen are not all that honest. When we did our shopping for our travel trailer, we really liked the Four Winds Express Lite 18B. It is not too large, just 24 feet long. It has windows on all sides to let the light in. It was affordable for what we wanted.
So, I asked the salesman, “will my Explorer pull this thing?” We sat down with him as he pulled some books out of his desk. He asked us “what engine?”, to which we replied “the 4.0 V6”. He asked which model, we replied “Sport”. He then looked in his book, then looked over his glasses at us, then back to his book and then the verdict, “Yep, yours will pull it just fine”. We were excited that we had enough power to pull the trailer.
The day of delivery; Okay, so we go to the RV Dealer and the service gang were just fantastic. They spent two hours with us going over all the details of how to operate all the features of our new travel trailer. Then, as part of our session, they taught me how to hook up the trailer to my tow vehicle. With that done, we pulled away with our new toy!
Our first long trip was about 450 miles and oh man, it was a white knuckle drive! We learned, (the hard way) that our tow vehicle just wasn’t enough. So, I had to upgrade! I know some of you are reading this and nodding your heads, because you did the same thing.
My new tow vehicle pulls the trailer just fine and you would think I would have no more problems. Well, all this took place in June of 2006. Here we are in January 2008 and I find myself itching for a trailer upgrade or maybe a Class C or even a Class A. Will the madness ever end? Nah….that’s one of the great aspects of this ‘hobby’!
Happy Camping and see you next Sunday!