Camping Trailers for Small to Midsize Cars

Lightweight Camping Trailers by Weight

Most experts recommend towing a trailer that, fully loaded, weighs no more than 80% of your vehicle's towing capacity. For a vehicle rated for 1000 pounds, as many smaller cars like the Honda Civic are, that's 800 pounds. Tongue weight is also critical. For some trailers, like the BYOPUCT, the tongue weight can be adjusted by distributing what it's carrying (bed, clothing, etc.) toward the front or rear of the trailer and securing the load so that it doesn't shift, but for other trailers, room for adjustment may be quite limited.

The weights of camping trailers start at a remarkable 250 pounds for the Earth T250LX teardrop and its cousin, the Earth T300, at 300 pounds, less than half the weight of the next lightest teardrop. Most of the lightest camping trailers are soft-sided pop-ups, as the tent-like tops contain much less material than the tops of teardrops or A-frame pop-ups. At the heavy end on this list are trailers that weigh up to almost 1500 pounds, but as noted above, most experts would recommend towing no more than 1200 pounds behind a car rated for 1500.

The weights given here are for trailers as sold in their base configurations. Many have built-in beds or other features that can't be removed, and they're often intended to be used with additional equipment that isn't included in the listed weight. Buyers should carefully add up the weights of everything they expect to actually carry in a trailer to make sure they'll be able to use it as they wish and still tow it safely.

Prices may be approximate. See Camping Trailers by Price for details.