The ability to haul a towed vehicle behind your motorhome is a real blessing. Old friends of ours who recently starting motorhoming with their first-Class A rig are bemoaning the fact that it isn’t like the old days when they could park their little Class C rig anywhere. Without a toad, they’re at the mercy of parking where their rig will fit–definitely a drawback, as she is a “Stop! Pull over at that little stand there!” kind of traveler.
But toad cars have their own set of drawbacks. One major problem is trying to back up the rig with the toad car attached. The simplest word here is: “Can’t be done!” And it’s true, for the most part. When you try and back up your motorhome with a toad car behind, the front wheels of the toad car inevitably cramp over, and continued backing becomes impossible–and damaging.
RVers are an innovative lot. Some suggest when you need to back up the motorhome and don’t want to first detach the toad, simply put somebody behind the wheel of the toad car, steering it, while the sidekick backs up the motorhome. Ever met anyone that’s really tried this? One potential outcome is having the toad’s front wheels suddenly (and we do mean suddenly) cramped over. Net result? The steering wheel, in concert, whips about in the hands of the operator.
The effect is about the same as suddenly whacking the front wheels of a vehicle against a curb. We can testify from personal experience that the two sprained thumbs that immediately resulted were certainly swollen, and made the balance of our trip in Mexico painfully memorable, despite years having passed.
This phenomenon doesn’t seem to be limited by brand or type of connection between motorhome and toad car. For this you can blame caster angle. That angle is a setting of your toad car’s suspension system. Going forward, caster angle helps the car stay stable and return to “center” after a turn. Put the car in reverse, caster angle doesn’t work as well. It actually makes the wheels want to “turn out,” and since they can only turn so far, they whip around and then begin scrubbing off that precious tire rubber on the pavement. But who gives a whoop about rubber scrub while you’re howling your head off as your thumb throbs like a tom-tom?
The bottom line is simple: If you’ve GOT to back up the motorhome, you’ll first have to detach the toad. Doing anything else is at your own peril.
