Towing a U-Haul from California to Tennessee

[JohnnyG]

Thanks for all the good advice on here. We're going to tow a U-Haul from California to Tennessee in a few weeks. I'm going to check with Toyota to make sure I have a trans cooler. I'm in TN and our Sienna has about 90K miles on it and is out in CA with my wife. I won't have direct access to it until a couple of days before we hit the road. My father in law is a professional mechanic and offered to install a hitch for us.

Anyway here are my questions: Do I need to have the tranny fluid changed? Any hitch brand recommendations? Has anyone hauled a U-haul long distance, and how big was the trailer? (6x12, 5x10, 5x8)

Best regards,
Johnny G.

[brian_bp]

I pulled a 6'x12' U-Haul about 1300 km (800 miles) through every kind of highway (2-lane, fast 4-lane, mountains, flatlands) from southern British Columbia to central Alberta. It worked fine, although the lack of a tongue jack is a slight annoyance, the tandem axle design is very sensitive to hitch ball height, and the weird U-Haul "handwheel" coupler seemed to develop slack as we drove (check it every gas stop).

Among the standard U-Haul enclosed cargo trailers, my opinion is that the 4'x8' and 5'x8' are nearly useless because they have no brakes and weighs 850 lb and 900 lb empty, so there is no useful capacity to add cargo before exceeding the Sienna's limit of 1000 lb without trailer brakes. This leaves the 5'x10' and 6'x12' trailers; the choice between them boils down to whether the need is for space (6'x12' obviously has more) or weight capacity (the 5'x10' is lighter, leaving more weight capacity for cargo).

In case anyone is curious, in general U-Haul single-axle trailers do not have brakes, while their tandem-axle trailers do have brakes. The brakes are of the hydraulic surge type, so no controller, wiring, or other preparation is needed on the tow vehicle... that's normal for rental trailers. I have a controller in my Sienna for my own trailer, but it is irrelevant to U-Haul towing.

The common coupler height of U-Haul trailers seems to be at least 16" (maybe 17") and thus requires a significant rise in the ball mount on a (second-generation) Sienna.