Towing a Vehicle behind my RV

[Jerryfr]

My opinion...nothing more.
Having been there I learned a tow dolly, no matter how good of a tow dolly you get, will take away a lot of the fun of your trip. Again, my opinion. After one year with a TD, we went with a toad. Yes, the purchase and then having it prepped to tow and stop cost a lot.
But the difference is day and night. No more watching it, no more keeping the straps tight, no more the hassle of loading and unloading. No more pulling a roped calf down the highway.
Just my opinion, nothing more.

 

[Newton36B]

I agree, I used a dolly for about a year, had a blowout on the dolly, ripped off the fender, had to have the wife drive the car home. Also some rv parks make you store the dolly in another area of the park, this happened to us when staying at a river front park in Oregon, I had to disconnect the dolly and push it by hand into there storage area, not fun !

 

["EZ"]

I used to tow a Ram 1500 4wd with my Blue Ox tow bar until I sold it. If your Ram 1500 is 4wd you can flat tow it with ease. I now tow my wife's Jeep Grand Cherokee Trailhawk 4wd. It also has the electronic transfer case since it is 4wd. I can't even tell either one is back there without looking at the back up camera. Not sure about you Jeep Compass. But if you have the electronic transfer case that can be put into neutral by pressing a button then you should be good to go. But if it was me I'd flat tow the Ram 1500 so you could be more comfortable when you had to drive it. LOL.

I also bought an Air Force One auxillary braking system so if my truck or Jeep ever come loose they won't kill another family when they crash into them at 65 MPH. Lots of people don't use them but I couldn't sleep at night after killing someone's kids because I wanted to save a few bucks.

 

[FloridaSon]

I used to tow a Ram 1500 4wd with my Blue Ox tow bar until I sold it. If your Ram 1500 is 4wd you can flat tow it with ease. I now tow my wife's Jeep Grand Cherokee Trailhawk 4wd. It also has the electronic transfer case since it is 4wd. I can't even tell either one is back there without looking at the back up camera. Not sure about you Jeep Compass. But if you have the electronic transfer case that can be put into neutral by pressing a button then you should be good to go. But if it was me I'd flat tow the Ram 1500 so you could be more comfortable when you had to drive it. LOL.

I also bought an Air Force One auxillary braking system so if my truck or Jeep ever come loose they won't kill another family when they crash into them at 65 MPH. Lots of people don't use them but I couldn't sleep at night after killing someone's kids because I wanted to save a few bucks.

EZ did you install the Air Force One yourself? Thanks

 

[Rich W.]

Sounds like you are on the right track. I would rely on the folks at etrailer and/or BlueOx above what Gandler or any RV shop tells you. It’s all good info but compare all three before you buy anything or agree to let anyone install anything. Sounds like you do your own work so thats probably not an issue, but people spend around $5k to get a tow vehicle all set up.

As mentioned before the braking system is a complete chapeter by iteself. I would (and did) do the reaearch and compare them all to my preferecnes and then decide, not letting cost be a factor, but rather base the decision on reliability and ease of use. Every state has some level of requirement for a braking system and a typical exemption is 1500lbs and under. So to be safe, and legal (and covered if something happens), you want one. Here’s a list to start looking at: 2021 Ram 1500 Vehicle Tow Bar Brake System | etrailer.com

The BlueOx tow bar is a good choice and making your own mounts is fine (I did that too) but one thing a base plate does is get the attachment point lower than the frame of the toad. So if you go this route you might need to raise the towing height on the coach to level things out. You dont want any more than about 2” + or - between the attachment points and the receiver on the coach. I needed to raise the hitch 4” so for that I bought one of these: https://www.etrailer.com/Hitch-Adapters/Roadmaster/RM-058-4.html

 

["EZ"]

EZ did you install the Air Force One yourself? Thanks

No. I paid a local company to do it for me. They did a very good job. I travel a lot for my job and just didn't have the time to do it myself although I normally do all my own work on my vehicles.

 

[Oldbear]

So lets say that the Compass is out and i tow my ram ( its on the list of 20 best vehicles)
can I assume that all i need is a tow bar and magnetic light kit.

And a rv brake so the Ram’s brakes will work when the rv brakes are applied.