I've been towing things since I got my driver's license at the ripe old age of 16. Seriously, my first gig upon getting certified for driving on public roads with other people was at my local Parks Department, towing 27-foot trailers with thousands upon thousands of pounds of mowing equipment with Ford F-250 and F-450 trucks.
Whoever thought that was a good idea, it was. But maybe it wasn't...
And in the intervening years, I've continued to tow things, both with my own truck and with others, and have towed all manner of toys and gear and equipment. Hell, at the time of writing, I just got back from towing my Can-Am Maverick X3 Max, complete with a Roofnest roof-top tent, down to my hunting grounds many hours away from my house.
But after all these years, and with the experience I've had, while I understand how weight and aerodynamics affect your truck's fuel consumption, I didn't really think about how drastic one is over the other. Or rather, how what you use to tow affects your fuel needle plummeting so rapidly. But this fuel consumption towing test from TFL Truck has me rethinking how I'll tow my side-by-side back to those same grounds in a few weeks.
Pay attention, folks, as you might want to change your setup after watching this video to save you quite a bit of money. Or at the very least, budget accordingly.
The basics of TFL Truck's test was towing the exact same amount of weight, using the exact same truck, along the exact same test route, but using an open car trailer with a more aerodynamic load (a Corvette) vs. using a toy-hauler trailer that's basically an enclosed box. Pretty simple, right? And that's exactly the point.
Each load was about 6,500 pounds total, so weight and payload are virtually the same. However, whereas TFL Truck believed that the two being so closely in weight would return similar MPGs, they found the brick-like nature of the toy-hauler greatly affected the truck's overall fuel consumption over their 70-mile test loop. To the tune of nearly 3 mpgs.
"Over a relatively short distance of 70.2 miles, you may not expect a huge difference between these two trailer profiles in an MPG run," states the outlet, adding, "As it turns out (at least in our testing here), that was not the case. In fact, the results of the box trailer run resulted in 10.2 mpg on the Buc-ee’s 70 run. As for the more aerodynamic trailer setup with the Corvette, our same Ford F-150 Tremor managed a remarkable 13.7 mpg. Between the two, that represents a 34% difference in fuel economy over this distance, in highway testing conditions."
That's a big difference between the two, and honestly more than I would've believed prior to the test. But the proof is in the pudding.
What's really interesting to me is that the toy haulers have become more and more popular over the years versus the type of open-element trailer I own. The reasons for the toy haulers are simple to understand, as it's more security for ever-increasingly costly rigs, and reducing the overall wear-and-tear of your machine, whether that's your snowmobiles, side-by-sides, motorcycles, or what have you. But based on the test above, it seems like there could be a few things done to improve the overall efficiency of these trailers, something akin to how big rigs have been increasing their own aerodynamic efficiencies.
Though you probably can't do anything at home to fix this, it is worth noting when you're considering upgrading or swapping out your trailer for something like a toy hauler. And, honestly, I'd love to see how efficiency is affected by having an open-air trailer like mine or the one with the Corvette but with a side-by-side or group of snowmobiles on the back versuses the other two, as well.
