3 Steps to Load Your Travel Trailer Before You Leave

Feb 19
06:54

2021

Rajeevking

Rajeevking

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You are planning a road trip to one of your favorite destinations. Maybe it's a family member's house,3 Steps to Load Your Travel Trailer Before You Leave Articles a national park you adore, or a brand new place you've always wanted to explore. This is going to be so exciting! Since you plan on staying a while, you have planned to pack a lot for the trip. The requires towing a trailer behind your truck. You found the right trailer hitch receiver for sale, now what?

 

A trip of this magnitude means more than simply waking up and leaving. There's a bit of preparation you'll want to do before leaving. One of the most important things is getting your hitch on. Adjustable receiver hitches are ideal when you sometimes want to tow and sometimes don't or when you tow two different trailers occasionally. That being said, it is absolutely essential that you get it on correctly. Don't worry! Here are three easy steps to load and tow your travel trailer:

 

Step 1: Load Your Trailer

You're going to take a lot with you and be gone for weeks or even months. This is going to get pretty heavy! How you pack your gear into your travel trailer can greatly affect the tongue weight of the trailer. You will want to make sure your cargo weight is evenly distributed and nothing will cause it to sway one way or another. A correctly loaded trailer will have about 5-15% of the total weight of the trailer as its tongue weight. If a trailer is counterbalanced, it can cause damage to your truck doing the pulling and it can be dangerous to pull down the road at high speeds.

 

Does this mean you need to leave stuff behind? No! Just be sure you pay attention to what you put where. Do not load all of your heavy items toward the back of the trailer or in one spot. Your trailer will lean to one side if it's not evenly loaded, or it will ride low in the back if it's loaded too heavily back there. Store your heavy items on the floor and your light items up higher.

 

Step 2: Use an Equalizer Hitch

Once everything is packed, redistribute the weight of your RV evenly across your tow vehicle by using an equalizer hitch. This can be done by attaching the safety chains to the bars of the hitch to transfer tongue weight to your vehicle's front axle. Your goal is to create tension on the bars so your trailer won't bounce out of place on bumpy roads. Doing this can improve your truck's ability to turn, brake, and steer as you tow a large load.

 

Step 3: Eliminate Swaying

Before you leave, you'll also want to focus on sway controls. Friction can help minimize or eliminate swaying back and forth as you travel at high speeds. Sway controls join the side of the trailer's tongue to the side of the vehicle's hitch. They're fully adjustable so you can increase or decrease the amount of pressure.

 

With these simple steps you can get your trailer connected and hit the open road in no time at all. After your adjustable receiver hitch is on and your trailer is packed, it is time to go!