Return of the…

Wagon Queen Family Truckster!

Notice Abigail’s addition?

But some things have changed.

When we went to WV at the beginning of the month with my entire “emergency preparedness kit” (generator, 15 ga. of gas, chainsaw, extension cords, etc.), two little girls and all their stuff, I obviously took the trailer and Subaru. For some reason at the last second I decided to remove everything from the roof of my car (including the load bars) and put it all on the trailer. The result was a 5 mpg improvement in gas mileage even while towing the heavy load. Just around town or down the highway without a load the best I’d ever get was 23 mpg. Now rolling heavy down interstate 81 we were getting 28 mpg!

We were convinced. Everything on the trailer was the way to go. Put all the load on the trailer and nothing on top of the car and it was smooth sailing.

So convinced, I got some more bins to fill out the trailer to keep everything easily contained and dry.

That’s three 45 ga. bins and two 54 ga. bins. They fit perfectly. All by Rubbermaid. Think I could get a sponsorship?

Then I took it a step further.

I got a class 1 hitch and wiring kit for the Prius. Tongue weight is 200 lbs. while max load is 2,000 lbs. Perfect!

When I went to air up the tires appropriately for towing, I couldn’t find a label specifying what the correct tire pressure was for towing. No problem. I’ll go online.

Hmmmm.

First thing I discover is that Toyota engineers don’t recommend towing with the Prius.

Ok. I find plenty of discussion forums where people do it all the time. I even found the guy that helped Curt Manufacturing design and build the hitch for the Prius, so it’s all good.

It’s all good until we keep packing more and more onto the trailer. It gets heavy and the rear of the Prius starts to sag a little.

Okay, so maybe this isn’t the trip to try out the Prius hitch. There will be plenty of opportunities in the future when it’s just a bag of clothes for each person and a bike where the Prius and trailer will work just fine.

So we switched back to the Subaru and had no issues – except for checking the gas mileage. Both times we filled up there were issues and we couldn’t get a clear picture of how much gas we put in or how much we used.

Oh well.

– b