You Can't Tow That With That

The thing I heard most, at least in the early years, was "You can't tow that with that!". They were referring of course to my choice of tow vehicle, the redoubtable Toyota Sienna Minivan.

Clearly I was going against the grain, but in my quest to avoid buying a pickup truck, I'd accidentally crossed paths with Andy Thomson, owner of CanAm RV, consultant to Airstream, and all-round egg-head when it comes to towing travel trailers. Andy has forgotten far more than most of us will ever know about the subject, and when he offered a good working tow setup for the Minivan, I knew it would work. Not too many others did, though, and I soon found out that I wasn't arguing the physics of towing with people, but their received wisdom on the matter. Received wisdom, let me tell you, is a difficult thing to influence.

It's actually quite alarming when complete strangers will tell you, without any encouragement, that you're doing everything wrong and would likely end up in a fiery wreck as soon setting out on the highway. At best, apparently, the Sienna would drop it's transmission onto the road in an oily puddle before I'd even got to the first campground. At worst, I was going to kill myself and everyone around me, and most likely my grieving widow wouldn't get a cent from the insurance. I actually stood in a campground in Georgia and listened to a man (who drove a VW Beetle with coloured spots all over it) tell me that there was no way on God's green earth that a Minivan could tow the Airstream. I looked at him, then at the Sienna, and said, "How did we get here from Ontario, then?". It was then that the Tumbleweed rolled by.

Face-to-face challenges were not too common, thankfully, and when they did occur it was normally when we were in the USA. A notable exception was a man in the Thousand Islands area of Ontario who told me it was fine to tow as I did in Ontario but that it was entirely illegal in the US and I'd be turned back at the border. "That's strange," I said, "We've just been in the States for two weeks and no one said anything". Then another Tumbleweed rolled by.

I get it, people love their trucks. They like the size and weight of the things, they sit up high and feel they can tow anything. Trucks are, actually, pretty poor tow vehicles, and getting worse as they get ever taller. But most know very little about the dynamics of towing, they only consider that the bigger the truck they have the more they can tow, which really isn't the case at all. But I'm not here to argue the merits or otherwise of pickup trucks, just that regardless of what YOU tow with, I can tow my Airstream with my Sienna. How do I know, beyond having a professional set me up? Fifteen years of trouble-free towing is how I know.

For all those that told me my setup was illegal, wouldn't last, would kill me, and all the rest, here's letting you know that I towed for nearly 30,000km and never once had an issue. No tail wagging the dog, no sway, no panic stops, nothing. The Sienna never broke down, either, and averaged around 15 miles to the US gallon when under load, which is markedly better than most gas-powered trucks. We never got stuck in a campground, never failed to make it up or down a hill, and always stopped to order.

We towed from Ontario to Orlando, and home via New Orleans. We went east to Boston, via Cooperstown, then north through the White Mountains of New Hampshire to Quebec City before heading home again. We've been up hill and down dale, and never struggled.

I learned early on how to go downhill safely, after a late night foray in the hills around the Finger Lakes of Upstate New York, when the fairly new drum brakes on the Airstream were smoking up a storm. Indeed, coming down hill was probably the trickiest part of towing a travel trailer, that is if you don't want to set your brakes on fire, or have the trailer push you into places you don't want to go. Drive like the semi-truck drivers do, knock your speed off before your descent, not halfway through it. We'd been through Franconia Notch in New Hampshire and there's a long and steep run into Vermont from there, so we just took it slowly and avoided any trouble. In fact we kept pace with the semi-trucks, which is how you know you're doing things the right way.

We never went west of the Mississippi or into the Continental Divide, where altitude can have a deleterious effect on a normally aspirated engine. Nor did we spend days slogging across the Prairies into a strong headwind, which is actually far harder on the tow vehicle than any amount of mountain climbs or their corresponding descents. But we did cross and drive through the eastern mountains, more than once, and we didn't miss a beat.

The Sienna hadn't been modified beyond the addition of that second transmission oil coiler, and the installation of a brake controller and the seven-pin umbilical cord. I replaced the shock absorbers after about four years of towing, although not because I had to, and I went for the standard Toyota fit. The Minivan was serviced in accordance with the Toyota schedule, and only had the synthetic transmission oil changed once in fifteen years. She never broke down, either, not once. The hitch receiver was showing signs of wear, though, and I had resorted to using a hitch clamp this past couple of years to stop the movement in the slightly stretched receiver box, and to maintain the best weight distribution. Similarly, the hitch head was getting a bit deformed at the point the weight distribution bars entered, the

round holes were getting quite oval-shaped, but everything was hanging together. All that of course was nothing to do with the Sienna itself, which handled all we threw at her with ease. 

The point of all this is to say that, despite the naysayers at the outset, We definitely could "tow that with that", although that professional set up at the start was essential. I know there was nothing to prove, at least not to myself, but for the doubters, well, you were wrong.

The Sienna isn't being retired yet, either. Despite having no trailer to haul, I'm going to keep her as my daily driver. Let's see how long it takes to get to 300,000 kilometres.