Tow Vehicle Shopping

I'm more of a truck guy myself as I have dirtbikes, a boat in addition to the trailer and my wife loves woodworking so we just need a truck. I was driving a 2001 GMC Sierra that I had for 14 years and 180K miles. It was a good truck and was still running pretty strong but I was getting to the point where I did not want to do long haul camping trips with it for fear of breaking down on the road. Gas mileage was also poor at 14-15 MPG hwy.

Over T-Giving last year, we traded in and got a 2014 Chevy Silverado. Same truck with serious updates. Our gas mileage jumped to 17-18 towing the trailer with about 500+ lbs in the back of the truck.

We are averaging about 23-24 city (with no load) and up to 27-28 hwy. Not bad for a truck. It has some pretty interesting active fuel management technology that shuts down 4 cylinders when there is no load so we can be driving down a flat hwy at 70mph and the engine will drop to 4 cylinders and our mileage will be in the mid 30s or more.

It's actually quite impressive.

Now, I will likely trade in my car (Honda S2000) next and replace it with a nice sporty diesel or something that is both fun to drive and can tow the trailer while still getting good mileage.

 

Wow that is awesome mileage. Had not seen that in the brochures. What size engine? Extended cab?
Me thinks I need to take a look at one.

 

I would have loved to have gone with a truck for our tow vehicle but it is also my wifes primary driver. We decided on a ford Explorer with an eco-boost six cylinder.The sport model that we got also has twin turbo chargers. Not 30 mpg but passing and mountains are no problem. Also not has nice as a truck for haulng equipment food, coolers ect. but sill pretty roomy all in all. Great grand kid hauler too with seven seats.

 

We tow with a 2010 RAV4 v6 with factory tow package. Pulls a teardrop wonderfully with 270hp and about 250 lb. torque. We get about 22mpg while towing.

 

Yep, shocked me as well. I think they claim around 16/23. I know I am getting way better than that. It's the 5.3L V8 extended cab (not the dual cab)


This was taken the very day we picked it up. In fact, we drove from the dealer to a little Mexican food place and snapped this picture. Funny part was we did not want a blue one because that is almost the exact same color as our old truck.



While I like GM trucks, I was actually looking at the Toyota Tundra, Dodge Ram, GMC/Chevy and Ford. I had several dealers bidding against each other as I am at one dealer, I had the others on phone and worked these guys pretty hard. Eventually the others cried uncle and the Chevy dealer got the win.

We live in Austin but we bought it in Arizona on our way back from our family camping trip. I noticed some transmission fluid starting to leak on my old GMC so I just made a decision right then to not drive it back to TX. So we stopped for a few days at my Dad's house in Mesa and started shopping for a new truck.

We had all our camping gear (canopy, extra wood, ice chests, etc.), my motorcycle and gear, some woodworking tools my dad gave us, etc. all in back. So it was easily around 500lbs of stuff in back if not more. We were pulling our 560 Ultra across I 10 and we were getting 17-18MPG. Now, most of that way is fairly flat and we could see the MPG drop when we hit some of the hills, but even then the worst we got was 14MPG. 14MPG was the best we got on that same trip on the way out. in our old truck.

As for city, we generally get about 22-23MPG but this is combined freeway and city streets. It can drop to 17 or 18 at times (or lower if we are really romping on the gas) and get up to 24-25 if we go easy. It has become a bit of a game between Valerie and I as we try to outdo each other on the MPG. You can tell when one of us has not used the cruise control because you climb in and see the mileage at 17mpg and you see all your hard work of getting the MPG up circling the drain.

I will say we try to set cruise control every where we go, even on city streets. This has a MAJOR impact on the gas mileage. If we don't use cruise control, we only get 18 city as we step on the gas too hard, too fast. This has a side benefit of keeping us from getting tickets as we set it on or slightly over posted MPH. We have breezed through speed traps that have snagged several of my neighbors. LOL.

MPG reported is from the onboard computer showing both real time mileage and historical mileage over 25, 50, 100, 400 miles (depending on how you have it set). Though I have verified via manual calculation as well as through smartphone app and they are very close to what the truck is reporting.

So, overall I am pretty pleased with the truck. It has Bluetooth for phone/music, USB ports, AC outlet port in cab, all sorts of whiz bang electronic stuff. I even got them to throw in a dash cover and electronic brake controller for the trailer.