Would this be safe?

My hubby and want to get a trailer for our family. We are thinking of doing one of 2 options.

1. Purchasing a tow vehicle (which would turn into a going to work vehicle when we are not camping) and then a trailer.

2. This is my question area. I see Little Guy makes a trailer that is lightweight and has a bathroom. I want to know if I could tow it with our minivan and not be risky.

Minivan:
GVWR: 5952 lbs
GAWR: 2833 lbs
GAWR: 3197 lbs
A VIN decoder told me:
base curb weight 4475 lbs
Dead weight max hitch trailer weight 3500 lbs
Dead weight max tongue weight 350 lbs
Total height 70 inches
No hitch on it right now.

Adults weight in vehicle 250 lbs roughly
Child A (with child seat): 75 lbs
Child B (with child seat): 55 lbs
Dog (no seat, but minor items): 30 lbs
Misc toys, food, iPads, and so on: 100 lbs (probably 25 - 50 lbs but I will say 100 lbs just incase)

Trailer:
Total height 89 inches
Total Length: 180 inches
Tongue weight: 165 lbs
Curb weight: 1760 lbs
GAWR: 2900 lbs.

So is this even worth considering?

Oh and yes I know that the T@b's only have a bed for 2. I was thinking that I could get the side tent, put my older one in that (he is 7) and my baby would fit on the front bench (he is tiny for his age).

We're gonna need a bigger boat

About the onlly needed info is the towing capacity (pounds) and grose COMBINED Vehicle weight rating (GCVWR)

That said, there are not many vehicles that can't tow a Tab.....

Towing capacity is the lesser of two things
1: Hitch rating
2: Max Combined weight less actually weight of tow vehicle.
But I do not know what the max combined weight is.

Kids only get bigger. What will you do in 2-3 years? Also, do you know your 7 year old will sleep alone? In rain, hot weather, thunderstorms? Nothing against a T@B, but it is not a 4 person setup.

Finally found the GCWR! 8410lbs

I have asked my 7 year old if he would mind sleeping on a cot (right now he sleeps on the floor of our tent) and he said yes. My thought is as my boys get older they will want to sleep AWAY from mommy and daddy and not with them. They are very close so I would see this would be the issue rather then them wanting to be with us. We would have to see though.

I am just having a hard time spending $45K on a vehicle (a truck) that honestly I wouldn't be considering except for camping. We don't really need a truck for anything other then camping.

There are really three primary numbers needed.  I am missing one of them.

On the driver door B pillar is a yellow sticker with a statement like, "The total weight of all cargo and passengers shall not exceed XXXX"  This is the most weight the van can carry, or CCC.

You propose to carry 510# of people, pets and cargo, plus 80# for a hitch, plus 300# tongue wt.  = 890#  If your CCC is greater than 900#,
you pass test 1    (Tongue weight is 10% of loaded TT weight.  The dry TW is for an empty TT.)

Test 2.  Weight of vehicle plus camper must be less than GCWR, or 8410#  A fully loaded TT weight is 2900# and a fully loaded van weight is 5952#.  The TT tongue wt is included in both numbers, so
2900# + 5952# - 300# = 8552#.  This is 140# overweight.

If your CCC is greater than 1050#, so your loaded wt is 150# below max, you are good.
If you keep the amount of gear in the camper and car  below their respective CCC by a total of 150#, you pass Test 2.

You should be very close to being completely within specs.  Your overestimate of Misc Cargo already has you half way there.  A little prudent planning and packing should make it work.

Does the trailer weight assume full tanks? We would likely have maybe a few gallons in the potable water tank and that is it. The tanks on this are 11 gallons fresh, 19 gallons grey, and 6 gallons black. We don't plan on camping off grid for more then a night.

Does this make a difference in the weight? I don't want to cheat it, but realistically I don't see us being without hookups that much while camping. 

I didn't see a yellow sticker on my van. I will have to check again in the daylight.

Don't know if you need a "truck" per se, but one of the larger SUVs or a full size van would be a wise choice. You need more cargo capacity and a bit more tow capacity just for the T@B, and even that will probably be obsolete in a year or two was the kids grow and want more toys. Suburban, Tahoe, Yukon, Dodge Durango, Expedition, Ford E-series van, etc.  Something that will get you more CCC and enough tow capacity so that you aren't already at max load when you leave the house the very first time. That would also allow for a slightly larger trailer, maybe a hybrid model of some sort.

Depending on the age of the minivan, it may not have a "yellow sticker". It should have some sticker though, that shows axle capacities, GVWR, and tire size/pressure.

I had Ford Escort that was heavily abused before I got it. I will give you that, but then I went to drive it on a move from New York state to Florida and the darn thing refused to leave New Jersey... yeah not optimal. My mother had a fancy Camero that she got brand new in 1985 and I still have memories (I was 9 at the time) of that thing being in the shop for the first month we had it. The dealer in his infinite wisdom thought that a Chevette was a good replacement car when you can't have the car you purchased for a month (clue... it just made my parents angrier!). This is my long winded way of saying I am having a REALLY hard time coming to grips with the fact that I may have to go to a Ford (probably, hubby would consider a Chevy but may divorce me if I considered a Dodge) rather then sticking with Toyota and Honda (what we currently have).

The sticker I found I put the weights in my first post. Our minivan is a 2007 and we are the only owner of it in it's life. We baby our vehicles. So they are in very good condition.

I know it sounds strange but I think the trailer would work for us when it comes to our children. My children are intellectual and not really athletic (that we have seen yet) so I don't see them wanting very many toys other then an iPad to find out what a bug or a tree was. I have thought about bikes but honestly I don't even really see them wanting that, especially if we could rent them at the campground.

Hmm so it sounds like most people here think we would be pushing it. Pilots have a bit more towing capacity but that would put us back to waiting till we could get another vehicle and then a trailer. Might as well get the big truck (thinking 250 series) and a 30 foot trailer.

The first thing is your family safety.  Follow Gary's advise.

in addition to the advice given above, should you decide to try this, you'll probably need to seriously improve the transmission cooling on the van. MOST have minimal transmission coolers at best...and some just have the tiny cooler in the radiator. VERY insufficient for towing.

We drove four kids (well, we started when we he just two) all over the country using a mini-van and a pop up. Pop ups are comfortable, easy to tow, and easy to put up and down (really!). A T@B doesn't have a big enough bathroom for 4 anyway, so why don't you want to look at a pop up which would fit your van and be able to accommodate a growing family? We ended up carrying a portapotty for night time, and we added privacy by surrounding it with a shower curtain we attached to the ceiling with a RV specialty track, very inexpensive and easy to install.

A pop up wouldn't solve one of our problems. That is our dog refuses to go camping. He HATES it. Not just a little either, he HATES it. In a trailer that has walls and not a tent, he could sit on a couch, not hear every little thing, be in AC, and sleep. That is what he loves to do. Think of him as a cat that barks. Right now when we go camping we send him to the kennel and he has fun and we have fun too. Our dog would love to go for a couple of walks and then sit and sleep the rest of the day while we sight see.

We also like tiny. We could have got a bigger house but I didn't want to clean it. Small doesn't bother us. Also I don't intend for the bathroom to be used all the time. I live with 3 boys. TRUST ME as a mother of 2 boys I don't want to clean a toilet that they use all the time! If we are at a KOA or a campground with a bathroom nearby that is clean and tidy, I would expect us to us that and not the bathroom in the camper. However if I need to go in the middle of the night, I don't want to have to walk a half mile either (we were at a campground like that last year in a tent). It would also be nice to have a place to go when on the road and every bathroom looks like it was last cleaned by a blind armless person.

Honda requires us to get a weight distribution hitch, a transmission cooler, and a power steering cooler to tow. So IF we did this, that is what we would get. I don't know how much all of that weighs but I can't imagine it would be that much.

Knowing us, we would weigh everything before we would put it in either the van or the trailer.

A 2007 model WILL have the yellow sticker.  Look on the driver door B pillar. (latch side of door)  The label you quoted is usually on the door itself or on the front A pillar.

3 Ladybugs said:

This is my long winded way of saying I am having a REALLY hard time coming to grips with the fact that I may have to go to a Ford (probably, hubby would consider a Chevy but may divorce me if I considered a Dodge) rather then sticking with Toyota and Honda (what we currently have).

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It might pain you to hear this, but... brand doesn't really matter.    The majority of us here (with some exceptions) have come to that conclusion, whether discussing trucks, trailers, motorhomes, etc.  We highly recommend shopping for features and capabilities, rather than the badge that is slapped/painted on one end or the other.  Domestic isn't domestic and foreign isn't foreign anymore... parts are pretty much all manufactured in China or Mexico and then shipped/assembled/sold in the U.S. (for the American market anyway).

3 Ladybugs said:

Hmm so it sounds like most people here think we would be pushing it. Pilots have a bit more towing capacity but that would put us back to waiting till we could get another vehicle and then a trailer. Might as well get the big truck (thinking 250 series) and a 30 foot trailer.

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Perhaps, but you do not have to buy brand new nor do you need a pickup.  A truck wasn't practical for our family so I stuck with the full size SUV market.  I have a 3/4-ton (2500 series) Chevy Suburban that is rated accordingly for towing, and those were made up until 2010 I believe in the various Suburban body styles.  Not nearly as common as the standard 1500-series but they are out there if you research.  The Ford Excursion (especially the diesel) is much sought after for heavy towing also, but those are quite rare and prices remain high even for 10yo good, used units.  Dodge never made a 2500-series SUV so no worries there. 

3 Ladybugs said:

We also like tiny. We could have got a bigger house but I didn't want to clean it. Small doesn't bother us. Also I don't intend for the bathroom to be used all the time. I live with 3 boys. TRUST ME as a mother of 2 boys I don't want to clean a toilet that they use all the time! If we are at a KOA or a campground with a bathroom nearby that is clean and tidy, I would expect us to us that and not the bathroom in the camper.

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We also have 3 boys, and much prefer our RV bathroom.  It's "ours" which is what appeals to RV'ing to begin with, a second home that we can take along.  And honestly I would not rate most campground bathrooms as "clean and tidy" although I'm sure there are exceptions.  But most of us prefer RV camping (over tents or hotels) because, as we say, you always know what happened in the bed and who sat on the toilet. 

You should be able to find a smallish travel trailer with a queen bed, a couple of bunks, and a bathroom (maybe not a BIG bathroom but a place to rinse off and do the necessary business) under 20 feet towable by vehicles that aren't all that big.  And I bet it won't even be that hard to do either new or used-- it's a fairly common size and layout.

Finding something hard sided that will accommodate 4 and a dog towable by your minivan will be a taller order though...

Something like this, for instance would pull behind a whole boatload of vehicles.  (Not that I think you need that particular model...just pointing it out as an example )