Stopped briefly in Lexington, Kentucky last night to sleep at a hotel. Saw this genius driving around while on Facetime just talking away when they should have been driving. Any semi drivers reading this are probably laughing like “yup, idiots everywhere”. Good times, stay safe out there people.
Next morning I visited Knoxville, Tennessee briefly to finish loading the trailer with items for my mom that belonged to my grandfather who passed away in 2022. Some curious things in there. He used to deliver for Pepsi many years ago and had a ton of old soda-related antiques, glass bottles, and other interesting junk. Trailer is now full as is the bed of my truck.
My trusty Tacoma was now sitting a little lower with the extra weight. I have an 11″ drop hitch and it’s sitting about 19″ from the ground at the ball now which makes the truck almost perfectly leveled out. I think one extra inch would have been more perfect but it’s darn close as is. Pleased with my preparation.
Out of curiosity I stopped at a CAT scale at the nearby Loves travel stop. Truck weighs around 5500 lbs as I’ve weighed on other trips. Total weight today with the U-Haul trailer is 9,360 lbs. Empty trailer weight is a hair over 1,900 lbs meaning I’ve got about 2,000 lbs of cargo (not including me sitting in it). Well within all specs and room to spare.
One new gadget I was testing is an OBDII reader that outputs data to custom gauges so I can monitor transmission temperatures. This way I have a better idea how healthy things are while towing. All in all it was better than expected and temperatures only topped out around 170°F which is excellent. Credit to the OEM trans cooler, it does it’s job well. Toyota’s 4.0L powering my Tacoma tows this load with almost zero effort. Downside to towing is limiting speeds to around 55-60mph but it’s no problem at all, just a slow cruise south. Onward to Mississippi to unload.
Note from the author: If you think this post isn’t super exciting you are correct – my main purpose is to drop a marker on my interactive geomap which you can find here and see all the places I’ve been.
Lat = 35.7332153 , Long = -84.3994751 -- Show at Google Maps