the following sections, we walk you through some of the specialty kinds of travel trailers you may want to consider.
Toy haulers or sport utility trailers
If you ever thought wistfully about owning an RV but just couldn’t bear the notion of going anywhere without your motorcycles, bikes, trikes, ATVs, snowmobiles, canoes, golf carts, or race car, the toy hauler is for you. These trailers have the usual RV amenities of a kitchen, dinette, couch, bedroom(s), and bathroom, as well as an additional empty space in the rear with a fold-down ramp. Drop the ramp, push all your big stuff in, lash it all down, and hit the road. Some versions even let you reconfigure the ramp as a raised, outdoor patio deck after you’re done unloading.
The goal of most RV designs is never to waste valuable space, and many toy haulers are set up to do multiple duties. The garage area may have a TV, flip-up bunk beds, or fold-out couches you can open up after you park and pull out the Harley. Some have a second bathroom, so that campers outside can use the facilities in the “garage” without traipsing through your living room. More compact ones may convert the garage area into the main bedroom with a fold-down Murphy bed or one that lowers from the ceiling, figuring that you won’t need to sleep until after you’ve dragged all your stuff out at the campsite. Others make use of the garage area to set up a home office. There’s tremendous variety in these types of trailers, with more introduced every year.
Toy haulers come in many sizes. There are toy haulers as short as 19 feet that have enough room for a motorcycle, an ATV, or a couple of mountain bikes. The biggest ones are fifth-wheel trailers, which give you the ultimate combination of indoor living space and a big garage. Just be aware that a fifth-wheel trailer requires a beefy truck to haul it. (More about fifth wheels later in this chapter.) And there are also several toy hauler motorhomes on the market. Instead of towing a small car behind, we’ve seen these motorhomes with a golf cart, Mini Cooper, Fiat, or Smart Car tucked into their onboard garages.
Lightweights
One result of typical cars getting smaller every year has been that the RV business has had to get creative when it comes to building and marketing trailers that can still be towed without a pickup truck or hefty SUV. Back in the days of yesteryear, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, the average American car was a colossal, steel behemoth, with a V8 engine and a transmission capable of powering an M1 tank. You could haul around a 40-foot aluminum trailer with an average fully-packed family sedan or station wagon, and still have plenty of horsepower left to drive it up to the top of Pikes Peak without breaking a sweat. But that hasn’t been true for several decades now. In the demand for smaller, lighter, more fuel-efficient vehicles, the auto manufacturers have split their efforts between making littler (and seemingly identical) cars, while building massive and increasingly luxurious pickup trucks. The average “full-size” SUV in the 2020s is a pale imitation of the ones that dominated the market in the 1990s and early 2000s.
We talk lots more about tow vehicles in Chapter 7. The point is that not everyone wants to buy or own a pickup truck. If the only thing you have to haul a trailer with is a two-door, midsize car with a 4-cylinder engine and little more towing capacity than the average riding lawn mower, there are still towable options to consider if you lower your expectations a bit and keep the word cozy in mind.
Most so-called lightweight or featherweight trailers tend to tip the scales at 4,000 pounds or less. But be aware that adjectives like these are about as informative as seeing the word FRESH! on a bottle of dishwasher detergent. They’re advertising claims and not any sort of official industry designation. There are still several trailers that weigh no more than 2,500 pounds and still have enough amenities in them to please a single camper or a really friendly couple.
Lightweights are smaller and built of lighter or thinner material than their bigger trailer brothers. When Airstreams first hit the market in the 1930s, built with aluminum, they were considered “lightweight” trailers — and they were, at that time. Although average travel trailers are built on steel frames and have real wood framing, floors, cabinets, and more on the inside, lightweights often use aluminum underneath and thinner, lightweight material for walls and other panels. In recent years, more companies have attempted to fill this niche. But some manufacturers have been specializing in lightweights for some time and continue to innovate: Little Guy, nüCamp, and KZ Sportsmen are frequently cited as the top makers of these tiny trailers.
Teardrop trailers
The teardrop trailer design has been around since at least the 1930s, and it continues to be popular, especially as more single campers have been taking to the road. The very first ones were often home-built units, and magazines like Mechanix Illustrated would publish trailer plans so the intrepid do-it-yourselfer could knock together his very own teardrop or mini trailer out in the garage workshop. Everything old seems to be new again, and today you can find modern plans online to build your own.
A teardrop trailer usually looks exactly like what it’s called, with a big, rounded nose in the front, tapering down to an aerodynamic point in the back (see Figure 2-7) — sort of like a comma turned on its side. The tiniest teardrops have little in them besides a bed for one or two very friendly people, some lights, and maybe a TV. In the back end, they often have a tiny kitchen area hidden under a flip-up hatch. Most have an onboard 12-volt battery system that can power a few essentials and can be recharged by plugging into a 120-volt electrical outlet, a generator, or solar panels, or by hooking up the trailer’s electrical hitch connector to your car and starting your engine.
Typically, these tiny titans are no more than 5 feet tall from the pavement to the roof, and between 4 and 6 feet wide. At just 8 feet long and less than 1,000 pounds, the smaller teardrops are lightweight enough to push by hand and store in your garage. Best of all, the smallest SUVs can tow them.
Photograph courtesy of Christopher Hodapp
