Avoiding mountains, traveling north of Greenville, SC

[Midwest Michael]

I would strongly recommend you rethink your plans. "May" void your warranty means that if you have any engine or transmission problems from this point forward you "may" as well consider yourself s.o.l. - and thats because you will be putting a tremendous amount of stress on your drivetrain that is all but certainly reduce your cars lifespan. 1400lbs is just too much weight for such a small car, especially over such a long distance, and there are also significant safety concerning the ability to control that kind of weight at high speeds.

Its one thing to be a little overweight on your towing and going a short distance. being 50% overweight and towing for a couple thousand miles is a very bad idea any way you look at it.

[glc]

Okay, when you get to St. Louis on I-55, take I-270 to I-64 to Wentzville, then US-61 to near Keokuk, then IA-27 to US-218 to Iowa City, I-380 to Waterloo, then back on US-218 to US-18 to I-35. This is the most direct route from STL to I-35 south of MSP.

[Ben_]

I would strongly recommend you rethink your plans.

, etc....

Yes, you are probably right. But I'm afraid we're already committed. I leave tomorrow. I'll be taking a bunch of precautions: won't be going more than 55 mph, and I'm following the other fellow's advice and headed west through Memphis to avoid all the hills. I'll update this thread when we arrive in MN to let you know whether we made it or not. It should be an interesting 24+ hours!

Thanks again for your comments.

[Ben_]

Thanks glc, I'll be following this route; and I'll update the thread when I arrive in MN.

[Midwest Michael]

By 24+ hours, I sure hope you mean 72 hours. With the extra miles for this longer route, and the set-up you have for this drive, you need a minimum of 3 full days for this trip if safety is actually a concern.

[Ben_]

By 24+ hours, I sure hope you mean 72 hours. With the extra miles for this longer route, and the set-up you have for this drive, you need a minimum of 3 full days for this trip if safety is actually a concern.

I was doing it with one other person that is a road warrior, so we swapped to stay alert, spent the night in St. Louis, and did it in 2 days. When I said 24+ hours I meant 24+ hours actually moving. It ended up around 25 hours – about 15 hours day 1, and 10 hours on day 2.

But as promised, I'm updating to say that we made it safely and without incident. The weather was fantastic – no rain and the wind was low – and everything went well despite being overloaded. We stopped at the first Flying J and weighed the trailer and car, and it came in overweight. Trailer was 1700 pounds (200 over hitch rating), and the car came in at about 3600. This is about 500 pounds over the absurdly low US manual's cargo rating, but that's a problem that could be another thread on its own.

I don't recommend anyone doing this, but for us it worked. We took the long way to avoid all the hills, drove cautiously, stuck to the right hand lane, etc....and everything was fine. Thanks again to everyone that contributed to our finding the safest route. We appreciate it.

[Midwest Michael]

You were 200 lbs over your hitch rating, on top of being 70% over your cars recommended maximum towing capacity?

Then on top of that, you did this in just 2 days, including an extremely dangerous 15 hours on your first day?

We are thankful you didn't have any problems, but please don't for a second think what you did was safe. What you did was very, very dangerous. Essentially, you played russian roulette, and you won, this time. You may not be so lucky next time.

[Ben_]

You were 200 lbs over your hitch rating, on top of being 70% over your cars recommended maximum towing capacity?

Then on top of that, you did this in just 2 days, including an extremely dangerous 15 hours on your first day?

We are thankful you didn't have any problems, but please don't for a second think what you did was safe. What you did was very, very dangerous. Essentially, you played russian roulette, and you won, this time. You may not be so lucky next time.

Well, I wouldn't have recommended it, but for financial reasons, we had to do it this way. I won't argue with you about the overloading. I tried to sell off most everything, but didn't quite do it as planned. I'm curious though, why do you say 15 hours between two people is dangerous?

[glc]

In order to drive that many hours in a day safely, there needs to be 2 people awake at all times - the driver and someone to make sure the driver stays awake. This is why you need 3 or more drivers in rotation to do a "speed run".

[Midwest Michael]

Financial reasons are a really bad reason to endanger other people's lives.

Countless studies have shown - and the crash statistics back it up - that the human body will start to start to seriously suffer the effects of fatigue after sitting in a car 10 hours, and the longer you continue to operate a vehicle, the worse the effects get. Just swapping drivers every so often doesn't change the effects. Even if you didn't "feel" tired, I can assure you that your reaction times were severely dulled - much like someone who has had too much to drink - long before you stopped for the night. Throw in the fact that you were towing a severely overloaded rig where you needed an extra level of alertness - and had a much higher than normal possibility of having an emergency situation - and there is just no getting around the fact that what you did endangered the lives of everyone else on the road.

You got away with it this time. It's easy to conclude that what you did was just fine - no harm no foul - but that would be a horrible lesson for you or for anyone reading this thread to take from your experience. Statistics show that many repeat drunk driver get behind the wheel drunk 100 times before they get caught or get into a crash, it doesn't mean the first 99 times were safe. If you repeated your actions again, you might also make the trip safely, but eventually, when you do something that is very dangerous, your luck will run out - and many times it's other people who get hurt in the process.