Woman Tows Rental Camper With Her GMC In 98-Degree Heat. Then Disaster Strikes: 'The Car Was Not Rated'

A weekend camping trip to southern Utah turned into an hours-long ordeal when a family's GMC overheated repeatedly while towing a rented camper through 98-degree desert heat. What was supposed to be a three-hour drive stretched past five, with the engine running so hot that the only way to keep moving was to blast the cabin heater and pull over at every pass to let it cool.

Kortney Poulson (@kortneypoulson) posted the two-minute, 16-second TikTok on June 6, and it has since drawn more than 3,600 views. The video strings together moments from the road trip before Poulson speaks to the camera. "We are heading on a camping trip. We are going to Bryce Canyon for the weekend," she says. "Rented a camper because I'm not about to sleep in a tent with two toddlers."

The Three-Hour Drive That Wasn't

According to Kortney, the trouble started in the desert. "We've run into a little bit of an overheating issue here in the desert," Poulson says. The family pulls over for a bathroom break; "I think the Scipio Petting Zoo is still in business," she jokes, referring to a roadside stop off Interstate 15 in central Utah.

The family then made a tough choice. "We've made the decision that our car is just not going to be able to tow this camper because it's 98 degrees outside," she says. A second family, traveling right behind them in a truck, was pulling a smaller tent trailer, so the two groups swapped trailers, betting the truck can handle the bigger camper while the GMC takes the lighter load. "Let's pray that she can tow the little one or else we're freaking screwed," Poulson says.

Even with the lighter trailer, the GMC keeps climbing toward red. "Nothing like driving with the heater on in 100-degree weather to get the engine to go down," she says.

The timeline she offers is depressing. "We left our house at 12:30. It's supposed to be a three-hour drive. It is 5:22, and we are still an hour and 45 minutes away," Poulson says. They pull off at the Beaver Creamery, off I-15 in southern Utah, to sit in the air conditioning while the engine cools. ("The amount of sweat on my butt right now—it looks like I peed my pants," she adds.) They buy more coolant and push on, arriving to set up camp in the dark. "Home sweet home," she says. "So grateful we're here. Pray that we make it home on Sunday."

Her caption reads: "8 hours later … RIP."

Does Heat Affect Towing Capacity?

Heat does not change a vehicle's tow rating, but it shrinks the margin for staying within it. Hitch manufacturer BulletProof Hitches explains that "towing capacity remains the same in hot weather, but your vehicle and components are under greater strain" and that "systems that work fine at 70°F might overheat or fail at 110°F." The company flags transmission fluid as a particular weak point: in extreme heat, it breaks down faster, raising the odds of failure on a long uphill pull.

That is how a tow vehicle can struggle even when the trailer sits inside its rating. Commenter Michelle Dennis described the same trap from her own trip: her family "bought a camper in 2019," was "told that the truck that we had was rated to pull it," and realized on the road that "the truck was in fact not rated to pull the camper." They traded for a bigger truck.

The heater trick the Poulsons fell back on is a well-known emergency measure. Running the heater on full blast pulls hot coolant through the heater core, a small radiator behind the dashboard, drawing heat out of the engine and dumping it into the cabin. Allstate, citing Consumer Reports, advises that a driver "may also be able to buy a little time to get off the road by turning the heater on full blast," which provides "some additional cooling by draining some heat from the engine." The heat has to go somewhere, which is how a family ends up roasting inside a GMC in the desert.

Their destination would have offered some relief. Bryce Canyon sits on a high-elevation plateau, and the National Park Service records summer daytime highs there in the high 70s to low 80s, with an all-time record high of 98°F. So the brutal heat was on the approach, and they should have found some relief at the campsite.

'Bless Your Soul'

The comments were mostly sympathetic. Stevie Patterson zeroed in on the worst detail: "Ooof driving with the heater on in this heat … bless your soul girl." Kenadee Ferguson took the broader view: "Bless you for even camping at all."

Several viewers recognized the saga. "Why is this literally the story of our life when we go anywhere?" wrote Kyy. Rylee Egbert asked, "Is this a rental car?!” which Poulson shot down: "No!" The camper was rented; the GMC was theirs.

The friends who bailed them out also surfaced in the thread. "We gotchu," wrote Hannah Gray, drawing the reply, "You saved us."

The trip did end at Bryce Canyon, with camp set up in the dark and the family grateful to have arrived.

Motor1 has reached out to Poulson via TikTok direct message and GMC via email for additional comment. We'll be sure to update this if either responds.