Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
That's why pickups are so expensive they are a multi purpose vehicle, you can do so much more with a pickup I loved my pickups I had 3 F150's and could go anywhere with my FX 4x4 and helped many cars that were stuck in the snow can't do that with a minivan in fact those were some of the vehicles I pulled out of the snow. Nothing beats a big V8 motor.
I pulled a minivan out of the mud with a 2000 4Runner. It had the 3.4L V6 with 190 horsepower, but in 4L and even in the mud itself, it pulled this minivan out like a champ.
Quote:
Originally Posted by easy62
Sure you can put a hitch on a smaller minivan or car but what you can pull is limited. A pickup can pull twice as much I liked the option that I could pull a full size camping trailer with my class ll hitch instead of only a pop up trailer. To each there own but there are more full side pickups on the road than minivans. Why would you want to tear up your minivan interior if you have to use it to haul anything. I've seen allot of minivan's with there interior destroyed from hauling stuff.
Truth.
The hitch you see on most minivans (that actually have one, many of them don't) is the 1-1/4" hitch, which is too small for our trailer. Even if you put a 2" hitch on a minivan a little over 1/3 of your towing capacity in a minivan is spent on the weight of the trailer alone. Filling that trailer up to capacity would require a more robust towing vehicle than a minivan. Obviously you can still mount that size hitch onto a minivan, but you'd never be able to fully maximise its use. Sort of like hunting squirrels with a .30-06: you can do it, but there are more appropriate applications for a gun that big.
Back on-topic: I still don't see why most people would need a huge car where the car mostly has one passenger and zero cargo. Why not put a receiver hitch on a smaller car and have a Harbor Freight folding trailer stuffed in a corner of the garage for those occasional Home Depot runs? If you need to haul the little league team, sure. Get something that seats a ton of people. I'm not sure why anyone would need to spend all the extra cash and increased operating costs to haul around someone else's kids.
Easy. Most manufacturers will not even provide tow ratings for small cars such as a Camry, or Accord, Civic, Corolla, etc... because they are not designed to tow anything at all. The suspension, the tires, the transmission, the engine... all have to be up to par. Can you physically tow a small 170 lb Harbor Freight trailer with a Camry? Probably. Do they make hitches for them? Absolutely. (Don't forget you have to consider the weight of the hitch itself). Is it going to be an easy ride? Probably not.
To address the last question, I assume you don't have kids? We often have additional passengers with us. Sometimes we have to pick up an extra kid or two for ball practice when the parents are working late. (Sometimes they do it for us) Sometimes kids want to have friends over to hang out. Sometimes we want to go to dinner with some friends and they intend to have a couple of drinks (so one of us is the DD) so we take one vehicle to avoid them driving.
There are numerous circumstances as to why someone might need the larger vehicle. As said before ,there is no right or wrong answer. Just the answer that works for you. But some common sense does have to come into play.
I feel obligated to share this since I've made a point of saying I've not yet seen an example of this. Last night I finally saw a full size SUV with a cargo carrier strapped to the top. This vehicle was also pulling a large box trailer: one much larger than a minivan could pull. Wherever these people were going they were bringing a lot of stuff!
Meanwhile just a short few minutes ago my wife and 3 kids and a friend of hers and her 3 kids piled into our Sequioa to leave for a week at the beach. 8 people and all their stuff: no rooftop cargo carrier. You couldn't do that in a minivan. In the vast majority of minivans (literally every model I know of) you'd not even get past the 8 passengers part of the conversation.
I feel obligated to share this since I've made a point of saying I've not yet seen an example of this. Last night I finally saw a full size SUV with a cargo carrier strapped to the top. This vehicle was also pulling a large box trailer: one much larger than a minivan could pull. Wherever these people were going they were bringing a lot of stuff!
Meanwhile just a short few minutes ago my wife and 3 kids and a friend of hers and her 3 kids piled into our Sequioa to leave for a week at the beach. 8 people and all their stuff: no rooftop cargo carrier. You couldn't do that in a minivan. In the vast majority of minivans (literally every model I know of) you'd not even get past the 8 passengers part of the conversation.
SUVs are awesome!
You could have done the same with a 15 passenger full size van. Or a minivan with 8 seats and a rooftop carrier. Or a Honda Accord and make her friend take her own car.
However you wanted an SUV so you bought one instead. The majority of the time, I'm willing to bet the Sequoia has no cargo and 3 empty seats. That's like owning a transit van just in case a bunch of people need a ride to the airport at the same time.
You could have done the same with a 15 passenger full size van. Or a minivan with 8 seats and a rooftop carrier. Or a Honda Accord and make her friend take her own car.
Well, we don't have a 15 passenger van. That would be serious overkill, especially if you make the assumption that we buy that instead of the Sequoia. It's overkill as far as interior space and not as capable in other capacities as the Sequioa. We also don't have a minivan with 8 seats (I don't know if anyone does because I don't think they make them) nor do we have a rooftop carrier. We don't have an Accord either, and regarding our friend driving herself, if you can take one vehicle instead of two that makes more sense.
Still I see your point: there are a lot of different ways we could have achieved the same affect. I could have hired a helicopter. I could have sent them via pack mule. I could have dropped them off at the river which leads out to the bay which leads out to the ocean and they could have floated on an armada of kayaks and SUP boards!
But the truth is all those "you could have dones" are irrelevant because the vehicle I actually have was able to do the job, no questions asked.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ziggy100
However you wanted an SUV so you bought one instead. The majority of the time, I'm willing to bet the Sequoia has no cargo and 3 empty seats. That's like owning a transit van just in case a bunch of people need a ride to the airport at the same time.
Well no . People usually buy what they want so long as they're financially able to do so. There was no "instead" because there was on make and model my wife wanted. And sure, any given day that car isn't fully loaded the way it was yesterday. The same thing would be true of a minivan: it would have had more space than we needed on a day to day basis so that's a wash. But the SUV can do things the minivan can't do, and those various scenarios have been constant enough the SUV was definitely the more practical vehicle for us.
I greatly enjoy my T&C minivan and have no regrets. It lacks the towing power and off-road / AWD capabilities of an SUV. But the Stow-n-Go makes it very easy to create a huge cargo area (143 cu.ft.), which is highly useful for hauling furniture, lots of boxes, lumber, etc.
By contrast: a Chevy Tahoe 2017 has maximum 94.7 cu.ft. with 2nd and 3rd row benches folded down. A Ford Expedition is 108 cu.ft. maximum. My old Subaru Forester had about 75 cu.ft. maximum.
A Ford F-150 has 52 cu.ft. cargo capacity, though of course you could put in a very tall item such as a refrigerator. A truck is more about towing and weight; a full size Ford can carry 3,300 lbs of cargo, and can tow 12,000 lbs.
Different strokes for different folks.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
. People usually buy what they want so long as they're financially able to do so. There was no "instead" because there was on make and model my wife wanted. And sure, any given day that car isn't fully loaded the way it was yesterday. The same thing would be true of a minivan: it would have had more space than we needed on a day to day basis so that's a wash. But the SUV can do things the minivan can't do, and those various scenarios have been constant enough the SUV was definitely the more practical vehicle for us.
