Unconfuse me about towing capacity...

My plan in retirement (four years from now) is to tow home various POS's and tinker.  I have no means to do so now as my Grand Vitara is rated for 1500lb towing.  My plan was to get a van, probably a E350 cargo/passenger van pre-2005.  I was under the impression a E150 was undersized for a trailer and a full size car transport.  I don't expect to put many miles on it.  

My reason for mentioning this now is that I checked Copart yesterday.  Lo and behold a qualifying POS is available near Dothan, AL approximately 800 miles from me.  So just out of curiosity I pulled up U-Haul and tried to get a quote for a car carrier and compared the E150 and the E350.  U-Haul indicates that both are "not recommended" for the car in question (another Grand Vitara).  I'd really prefer to buy my own towpig and not pay U-Haul for one.  Is this situation legal CYA on the part of U-Haul, or is a one-ton van genuinely marginal for a car transport plus a 3000 lb vehicle?

Uhaul is both insanely conservative and insanely dumb about towing capacity, so I'd take anything they say with a grain of salt at most, probably less.  Generally Uhaul takes the attitude that a trailer can't be heavier than the tow rig under any circumstances.  And they have some other quirks to what they consider ok or not as well. 

I'm also no fan of Uhaul trailers for heavy loads, as they all have surge brakes, not proper electric (or electric/hydraulic) brakes.  So they push the tow rig around a bit more.  The Uhaul car trailers are pretty heavy as well, although I think the new version might be better in that respect. 

In reply to stroker :

From memory an E150 is rated at 5000lbs.

I assume the Suzuki weighs around 3700lbs or so and the U-haul car trailer is around 2000lbs so you'd likely be over by a good bit.

I have a 1990 E250 Coachman Campervan; the Van itself weighs 7100lbs with me and all the stuff in it. The total GCWR for the vehicle is 13,100lbs for the given rear axle ratio (3.73 I think). That leaves me with 6000lbs of towing capacity. The tow rating on the non RV E250 Van is listed between 6000 & 7600lbs.

An E350 should easily tow that; I'd expect it to tow around 8000lbs.

An E350 is plenty to tow that trailer. Rated between 5700 and 6900lbs depending on configuration. I towed 5500lbs with an E450 and didn't know it was back there.

You can Google "Ford towing guide XXXX" where XXXX is the year of the vehicle you're considering. It'll have all the info you need regarding towing capacities, payload, GCWR, etc. I'd trust that information way more than Uhaul.

The uhaul car transports weigh about 2000 lbs empty. I don't remember what their carried wight limit is, but I think it's 5000 or 5500 lbs. I'm not sure what else plays into their maths, I have definitely had it report odd "not recommended" things before.

For personal towing with your own trailer, you want to care mostly about rear axle weight rating, tongue weight rating, tow rating, and GCVWR. That will tell you what you can or can't tow within mfg specs, plenty of people ignore that with varying results but it's at least a decent guideline.

Those E vans, depending on spec, can have a very long rear overhang. Those versions can be sketchy to tow with, and I've had two friends wreck the their long boi E vans towing near the or just over the tow rating and getting into trailer sway. The standard length ones are better - same wheelbase, less overhang. The Chevy vans have various advantages (my opinion), one of which is that the longer vans have a longer wheelbase rather than a longer overhang and so tend to be a bit more stable. 

Been a while since I looked in detail (I ended up buying a suburban because 4x4) but I seem to remember the E250/350/450 vans don't jump up greatly in towing capacity, but they do go up a lot in GCVWR - they can carry a lot more inside while also towing, and the beefier rear axle means you don't run into axle weight limits. For your intended purpose, you probably won't have an issue with axle weight as long as you don't buy an E150.

An E350 regardless of model should have zero issue towing a uhaul transport with a Vitara on it.  

What's your trailer plan? That is, do you need to know what's legal and safe, or do you need to know what U-Haul will rent to you?

It doesn't matter if it's in spec if your rental place doesn't like it, whether that's U-Haul or someplace else.

My favorite local independent rental place has a flatbed I like with a broad, flat deck and a built-in winch, but because of its weight and capacity, they won't send it out with less than a 10k tow rating, and it doesn't matter whether I just want to pick up 1000lbs of drivetrain-free microcar.

For this and other reasons I ended up with a pickup. I'm still trying to figure out how to get some of the stuff about a van I miss figured out...

Timely?

https://www.thedrive.com/news/new-u-haul-car-trailer-starts-hitting-fleets-with-6800-pound-max-capacity

There are also more and less strict Uhaul locations. Some of them are very very strict about the rules and will not rent to you outside their specificaitons. My local Napa rents UHaul. I tell them I want to rent a trailer and they rent me the trailer. Not many questions asked. I had a place like that the last place I lived where I was always hauling 1990 Miatas for some reason [wink wink].

I tow with a 2014 LWB E350. I have never weighed the car/trailer independently, but the total rig (van, car, trailer, contents) is ~12,000 lbs. I'd guess the car/trailer combo to be right around 5,500 lbs. The long overhang can act like a lever a little bit, but I've never had any sway issue at all (I learned a scary lesson re: sway decades ago and am a pretty careful/cautious operator). The 5.4 doesn't love mountains and towing, but it does OK. In most circumstances, it's good. 

Before I got my own trailer, I rented a uhaul a couple of times. Once to pull a Mazda 3, and I'm drawing a blank on what the other tow was. In both cases, uhaul allowed it. 

I think Curtis knows a thing or three about full-sized vans.  He may have even towed something with one. 

I'm a big fan of having a tow pig.  I'd vote for Dually, though. 

Note, that does not preclude a full-size van. 

I haven't rented a U-Haul car trailer in a while, but I'm pretty sure they weigh about 2700. The trailer and my Miata was about 5000 pounds. 

The new trailer is even heavier. 
 

The Toy Hauler weighs 3,165 pounds on its own and has an easy-to-remember gross vehicle weight rating of 9,999 pounds

Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) said:

I haven't rented a U-Haul car trailer in a while, but I'm pretty sure they weigh about 2700. The trailer and my Miata was about 5000 pounds. 

The new trailer is even heavier. 

U-Haul claims it's 2210 pounds: https://www.uhaul.com/Trailers/Auto-Transport-Rental/AT/

Even that seems high to me, my big ole 18' steel and wood trailer weighs about that, and the U-Haul is aluminum. Still, given it's use cases, it's quite overbuilt, and it has stuff built in like tie downs that mine doesn't.

Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) said:

U-Haul claims it's 2210 pounds: https://www.uhaul.com/Trailers/Auto-Transport-Rental/AT/

Even that seems high to me, my big ole 18' steel and wood trailer weighs about that, and the U-Haul is aluminum. Still, given it's use cases, it's quite overbuilt, and it has stuff built in like tie downs that mine doesn't.

Welded aluminum doesn't really save much weight over steel, because the welding anneals the aluminum, the strength goes way down, and nobody has a heat treatment oven big enough to put a whole trailer into it.  I expect U-haul trailers are aluminum primarily for corrosion resistance.

The big problem with the old U-haul trailers was that there was really no way to adjust the car position on the trailer (it had to be all the way at the front because of the way it's designed) and that tended to result in huge tongue weights.  That helps with making sure towing newbies don't get a bunch of sway, but you need a pretty beefy rear suspension on the tow vehicle to avoid getting a ton of squat.  I dunno if the new ones have the same problem or not.