Class C Towing Winnebago View: Trailer, Dolly or Flat Towing

[Jeffreysm]

I don’t own an RV yet, but I have a dolly already. I want a trailer because I don’t want the limitation of not being able to backup, the ability to use the trailer for other things around home, I could pull my light weight Miata and I was looking at aluminum trailers.

Why would I NOT want to use a trailer?

Should I stick with a tow dolly and why?

Flat towing I can’t back up as well and I would have to buy another vehicle which my wife would hate. Although it would give me a good reason to get a Jeep!

Can anyone share experiences with all 3?

[be happy]

I have done 4 down and dolly. At present I am using a dolly and have been for the last 6 years. I decided to go the dolly way, as it gave me a larger choice of cars. 4 down is a little easier to hook up and less time consuming than the dolly. Both have there pros and cons but for me with all said and done they equal out.

As for a trailer its only my opinion but it think you are headed in the wrong direction. My thought is storing the trailer at the RV park, most parks are not set up for the trailer to be in the site. This would mean storing it somewhere else not my idea of a plan. The dolly takes up so less room and I have never had a problem with site length. With rv, car, trailer you are talking a rather long rv site. With dolly not so much as the dolly tong will fit under the rv so site length is not a problem.

I am not sure why you are concentrating on backing up. If its backing up in the rv park once the car is off the dolly backing is normal.

Which ever way you pick good luck and safe travels

[creativepart]

Weight. Weight. Weight.

The three reasons it’s impractical to consider towing a car on a trailer behind a Winnebago View.

The trailer + just about all vehicles you’ll want to tow = more than 5,000 lbs.

[Morich]

I think you will find a full blown trailer is the least used solution. I rarely see it done where I go!
But that gets into where you plan to go and how long the stays. If you are a "camping" style camper and plan state and national parks, there is often a lack of space if you are in the East 2/3 of the country as they like trees more than camper space! If desert is your thing, you can get lots of space as there is very little else out there!

In parks, you will often show up as three vehicles once the car is unloaded and that can mean move the trailer to excess parking if it is available and possibly pay extra for the extra vehicle. But the challenge of setting up to get the site, moving the car off the trailer, using the RV to tow the trailer to excess parking, then back to the site is not the way most of us want to go after a long drive! Many parks we use would make it very painful to do as there may not be many spaces where you can line an RV with trailer straight and drive onto it with the car-----unless you want to block the drive to the entire campground while doing it!
Will you always have a second driver in case you need to leave the campground before putting the car on the trailer?

But then you may have other type camping in mind? IF going to the higher end sites where they have pads long enough to handle the 40 foot buses, you will have a different experience as you are paying for the larger square footage and getting far fewer trees and shade! However they are much more prone to charging more for extra equipment.

No totally right, nor totally wrong way but the decsions are hard to make without knowing more about what you will be doing and that will only come after making a few mistakes!
I might suggest doing some short local camping where you might drive the car and RV and see what fits you best before making the expensive purchases like trailer, etc.

As a way to get some cheap info, perhaps look at some of the online campground sites for the type camping you feel you will like and look at the length limits for different sites available at that specific campground. That means that if the campground has sites which top out at 30 feet and your total will be 35, there is more trouble involved!

Perhaps choose a local campsite that fits what you feel you will be doing, drive out and look it over with diffferent needs in mind?
Pre-planning is good but planning with experience is better!

[Jeffreysm]

Thanks all for the insight.

It seems if I want a toad, the simplest would be flat tow on the ground for space sake at an given campground.

I really liked having the option of car of my choice with a trailer. (Within reason of weight)

So many things to consider.

[Jokaj]

Lots of things to consider. I dolly’d because I didn’t want to have wear and tear on the transmission (gears turn but no cooling of fluids) when towing four down. Trailers like others have said is hard to find space to park at RV parks. Not only that, depending on the MH, they might have two weight rating s. One for trailer and one for dolly/four down. My old class c had a 5000 trailer and 8000 for four down.