Jasper9999

MyNameIdeasWereTaken

How far are you want to tow it?
While you could back the truck on the dolly, all of the weight of the towed vehicle will be at the back, which is the worst thing you can do. It can break loose very easily and be nearly impossible to regain control of.

Does your son not have roadside assistance through his insurance company? Most of those will cover free towing within a certain distance.

If you're talking about towing it one mile, you could carefully just use a tow strap and someone in the other truck to hit the brakes and steer. Obviously wait until nighttime when there's no one on the road.
Otherwise a car hauler would be best since you can properly place the majority of the weight as close to the tow vehicle as possible.

Though, I'm not familiar with the exact weight of either vehicle or the towing capabilities of your 02.

tuflehundon

Go onto AAA.com. Get coverage through them for less than you would pay to rent the dolly. You can even do monthly payments through them. As soon as you make a payment and get emailed a card, you can use AAA. I have seen people do that at the scene of an accident, and get their cars towed home immediately.

Ricktwuhk

U-Haul has strict guidelines, and you can play with the tool on their website. They won't rent to you if what you're doing is outside the limits.

Their auto transport trailers can take a max of 5,290 pounds. U-Haul auto transport trailers are car trailers that are ideal for long-distance moves and have a maximum load towing capacity of 5,290 lbs.

Sounds like it's a distance away, no towing is going to cover that.

Jasper9999

Ricktwuhk

Totally irrelevant. Why? Because U-Haul requires in their contract that you specify both the vehicle you are towing with, and the vehicle going on the vehicle transport. That's what you're doing with their online configurator. When they see something that is outside their acceptable setup, they don't let you rent.

Sure, you could not tell them the truth, tell them you are towing a light vehicle. If you play with the configurator, you probably could figure that out. So let's say you do, and it says you can tow a VW Beetle. The problem is that you lied on the contract. If anything happens, you have huge liability. Enormous liability.

Consider renting a U-Haul truck and towing it with that and avoid the issues.

bisjoe

By the time you pay for the dolly or trailer, and risk damaging your truck by overloading it for such a distance, I would just get a commercial hauler to go get it. Try U-Ship, Carship, and others. The latter is advertising "as low as 33 cents a mile across the USA"
though a shorter route would most likely be more per mile.

MyNameIdeasWereTaken

I'm always for trying to take care of things myself, but sometimes it is best to let the professionals do it. As others said, it could be an unnecessary stress and risk to put on your truck.

Still, is there no insurance towing coverage? Even if insurance only cover the first 50 miles, they're the ones paying for those initial miles and the load charge. You would just have to pay for the remaining mileage.
Most towing companies (that insurance companies use) charge $2-4 per mile. You're looking at $100-$400 (depending on how many initial miles insurance covers) versus the cost of the uhaul rental plus the gas of driving 200 miles round trip.
I would think a tow truck would be cheaper, or so close in price that it would be worth the extra cost to save yourself the time and trouble.

uzikaduzi

i'm curious on why people think OP's 02 f150 can't tow a ~6k pds... i'd say the uhaul option wouldn't be a good idea, because at the weight we are talking, you should have a weight distribution hitch on top of the other reasons mentioned, but a 6k load being trailered is likely within the payload and towing capacity of OP's f150.

i don't know how i feel about dollying the truck, but you can just remove the driveshaft like people do for flat towing.

smokeywren

There's more than one way to skin a cat.

Your F-150 is probably "not properly equipped" to tow a U-Haul car-hauler trailer. The hitch weight will probably be over 500 pounds, so even if U-Haul would rent you the trailer, you would need a weight-distributing (WD) hitch to be legal. And the cost of a WD hitch that will work with the surge brakes on the U-Haul trailer would be more than the alternative.

The alternative is to rent both the truck and trailer from U-Haul. One of the small box moving trucks should have enough oomph to tow an F-150 on a car-hauler trailer. Plan ahead to have only a one-day rental and the price should be affordable. Maybe even a one-way rental if you don't want to bother with the 200-mile round trip to return the truck and trailer to where you rented them.