Ford E350

[sixmaybemore]

Okay. I'd thought to avoid the Ford larger passenger vehicles at all costs. Unfortunately, my options are becoming more and more limited in what I can drive, and be able to pull the size of travel trailer we need.

I have no problems adding dually wheels. What I can't get past are the roll cage issues. Does the Chevrolet Express have a better roll cage? I have no idea if I can get one with a decent towing capacity like I need, but I gotta start asking somewhere.....

[safeinthecar]

If it would set your mind at ease any, I can post pictures of my parent's 2006 F350 after they rolled it 3 times into a ditch. The cab held up amazingly. My mom had no injuries at all. My dad had a quarter inch cut at his hairline and a bruise from the seat belt. Their Pomeranian was ejected into 5 lanes of traffic, but somehow wasn't hurt in the crash or run over by another car.

[sixmaybemore]

Wow, that's pretty impressive!

I think we might hold off a few months on upgrading. I want to be sure we've covered all of our options, and do enough research to feel confident that it's going to be okay. Although I have to say with the reading I've done the past two days I'm feeling more okay with it, as long as I can get one with captain's chairs instead of bench seats.

We're still toying with going to a two vehicle set up so we can get a monster of a fifth wheel, too.

[strollerfreak]

I have a 2008 12passenger E350...like you we toyed around with the idea of getting a 6passenger F250 and making it our "other" vehicle with a 5th wheel hitch since half the time when we go camping we end up with 2 vehicles out there anyway. (We go camping about 25 minutes from home, and still go to our church on Sunday, and we're both involved with stuff at church so most of the time at least one of us has to be there early.)

We have a 28' TT that has a loft on it, I can't remember the weight of it off the top of my head, but I know it was at the max towing capacity of my Suburban. We usually pulled it with one of DH's work trucks this summer, but occasionally we did have to use the Suburban.

http://strollerfreak.itgo.com/family/Camping92008.jpg

Our trailer is on the left hand side of the road...we went "hippie" camping (LOL) this was during a Christian music festival, hence the stage across the road from us.

There was no way we were going to give up our trailer since it's *perfect* for us, so it was find something that would fit all of us and be able to tow it too.

[sixmaybemore]

Ohhhh what kind of trailer is that?

Looks like we're going to keep our current set up of the Suburban and the Frontier. We're a little crowded in the Frontier, but we don't want to finance anything. So we're going to suck it up for this year, and then decide if we want to upgrade to an E350 and larger trailer, or to a one ton pick up and (massive) fifth wheel.

[strollerfreak]

It's a Timberland Sky... basically it's an older version of this one, only 28' and with no slideout...

http://www.adventuremfg.com/floorplans/timberlodge/tl30sky.aspx

(If DH saw this, he'd want to sell ours and get this one! We've both been saying that it would be *perfect* if the couch/dinette were on a slideout!)

[sixmaybemore]

Yeah, that's the same thing we've been saying about our Frontier! If only it had a slide out.....

If we upgrade vehicles we all really, really like the Sprinter 311 BHS. It gives the kids some floor space and some privacy. I think I'm going to see if we can go look at that one you just linked though, that looks pretty cool!

[irishmama3]

We have a 15 passenger Ford Club Wagon, and I don't have stats on rollovers and such, but it's been pretty stable for us, and I'm not very used to driving it. I did read that most often rollovers occur when people are going to fast and overcorrect, though I did that on accident :o and nothing happened :whew:. I'm not sure if it's a E150 or 350, I'm researching that as we are going to need to sell it. We don't really need a van that big, so we are downsizing. How many seats do you need to use? What we did is take out the two rear bench seats and use that for cargo space. That might be an option for you and then you could look at more vehicles since you wouldn't have to worry about towing capacity for a trailer. Good luck!