My associate editor, Jason Sands, came into my office the other day and said, “We need to do more stories on towing.” At the time, I was stressed out about work, distracted, and wasn’t the most open-minded boss. But I agreed with him, and asked, “What do you have in mind?”
The story he suggested was a back-to- basics piece, geared toward people who have never towed. He went over all the article’s basics, suggested what the photos would look like, and what the reader benefits would be.
Quite honestly, his proposal seemed so plain, I wasn’t interested in it at all. Yet in Jason’s defense, it was an idea he thought I wanted to hear. After a few minutes of talking about it, Jason left, and I went back to work at the keyboard. We were clearly both frustrated by the experience, and the whole meeting would have met a dead end. But 20 minutes later, Jason came back into my office…
A Crazy Idea—That I promise You’ll Want To Read About
When Jason came back in, he had a new pitch to give me. He had a look in his eyes that said, “Forget that last idea—I’ve got something totally different to run by you.” He said, “The Guinness Book of World Records lists the top speed for towing a trailer at 139 mph, and I think we can beat that.” As I began to smile, my first thought was, “That’s the kind of stuff I hired this guy for!” It was a crazy idea, potentially dangerous, and yet it was exactly the sort of stuff I’d want to read about in Diesel Power.
The Discovery Phase
I know some of you are thinking to yourselves, “That doesn’t sound all that fast.” I’ll admit, I thought so too at one point. But it turns out this record is based on towing a single-axle, production camper, and the current record is held by a group of guys who used a 600hp, V-12-powered, Mercedes S600 sedan. The other thing you need to understand about this record is that the two challenges we face are: 1) Having enough power to drag what is basically a parachute behind you, and 2) Keeping the trailer from coming off the ground, fishtailing wildly, or literally breaking apart at speed.
So like any good innovator or explorer, my first step was to reach out to our friends and industry colleagues to find out if any of them had any insight on our goal. I thought for sure at least one of them might have considered something crazy like this. I know lots of truck engineers, and they’re all brilliant people who understand things about vehicle dynamics, mechanical systems, and aerodynamics that I’ll never master.
But breaking a Guinness record for towing a trailer at more than 140 mph is not the kind of thing I felt comfortable passing up the normal chain of communication—so I sent a chief engineer at one of the Big Three diesel truck manufacturers a private message on Facebook.
“[Name withheld], I’ve got a tech question I’d like to run by you. We’re discussing attempting to break the world speed record for towing a trailer, and we’re looking for info on the most aerodynamic pickup truck [Name withheld] makes. Would you have any insight for me on which model year and body style may be the best for us to start with? We’d be shooting for towing a trailer at 150 mph.”
I never did get a Facebook message back from this engineer—instead, he called me directly on my cell phone.
Building an Aerospace Tow Truck
This chief engineer, who will remain nameless, presented me with a lot of safety concerns and technical hurdles. Some I had considered, others I never would have thought of. We spoke for nearly five minutes before he even hinted at the fact that he thought we were crazy for doing this. Yet when I asked, “But you’d want to read about it, wouldn’t you?” he answered, “Absolutely.”
Now, for those of you who couldn’t care less about towing a trailer at these ludicrous speeds, there’s still an upside to our quest. We’ve now learned more about trailer towing than I ever dreamed—and it’s going to be great to share it, and an ice-cold Guinness, with you during the next few months.