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[MUSIC PLAYING]
Who doesn't love spending a beautiful weekend having
fun in the great outdoors?
You know, one of my favorite things
is getting out there with some exciting hardware
and choosing what size adventure I want to have.
For example, we can go small.
Or medium.
Or large.
There are so many vessels and vehicles
to satisfy your inner adventure.
But getting these beauties from point A
to point B can prove to be a bit difficult. Luckily for me,
my buddy Mike Monticello knows everything
you need to know about towing.
Jack!
Hey, Mike.
Right on time.
Today, I thought we'd talk a little bit about towing.
Mike asked me what size adventure I was up for,
I went for the boat.
How much do you think about and trailer like this weight, Jack?
I have no idea, about a ton?
Actually it's about 4,500 pounds, so over two tons.
Wow, OK.
Mike told me every truck has a tow rating, which
is how many pounds a vehicle can tow behind them.
A tow rating kind of consists of three basic, main things.
And the first one is the engine.
How much power does it make?
That's going to help it tow a bigger trailer behind it.
A vehicle with a big V8 is going to usually be able to tow
more than something with a four cylinder or V6.
It also matters whether your vehicle's
2-wheel drive or 4-wheel drive.
And the other thing, there's gear ratios--
whether your gearing is low or tall.
And that's a scientific way of basically saying,
how efficient is it can be able to tow this truck?
How well will it be able to access the engine's power?
All right, almost.
A little bit more.
There you go!
Great job backing up the truck, Mike.
Now what?
So the first thing we're going to do
is we're going to lower the trailer down
onto the hitch ball.
Uh-huh
We also have to make sure that all of our chains
are hooked up.
We gotta lock this in, like so.
Put in the safety pin.
There's a lot of little safety things
that you want to make sure you don't forget.
OK.
We also put these safety chains on
and we always cross them because what we want to do
is make sure that if the trailer were for some reason
to come off it would fall onto this cradle instead
of falling down onto the road.
Oh, OK.
And of course, we also have to hook up
the trailers electrical system because we want to make sure
that brake lights, the tail lights, and the turn
signals all work on the trailer in conjunction with the truck.
OK.
And we also want to hook up this trailer safety brake.
Because just in case the trailer were
to get away, this way that it would
put the brakes on the trailer and then it would stop.
So a whole bunch of safety systems.
And the next thing is a quick check
to make sure the brake lights and turn signals are working.
Perfect.
When a trailer sits for a few months,
it can lose quite a bit of air pressure.
So we want to make sure we check these tires
before we hit the road.
We have four tires to check here and you
want to check them every single time.
In this case, this was the right pressure.
You want to just go ahead and make sure the bad tire also
is the correct pressure.
OK.
Let me see what you got?
All right, let me know.
Yeah, they're looking good.
Finally, Jack, we need to talk about load capacity.
Just as the truck has a maximum tow capacity
of what it can haul behind it, it also
has a maximum capacity of how much it can safely
carry in the bed of the truck and in the cab.
We want to make sure that we haven't overloaded the truck.
Right.
And there's another thing called tongue weight
that we have to consider when we're towing.
Tongue weight is the amount of weight, in this case,
the boat and the trailer are putting right
onto the hitch of the truck.
That's usually about 10% to 15% of what
you're hauling behind you.
And that amount, in this case it would be 450 pounds,
counts against the payload of the truck
so that's 450 pounds of gear that you
can't be bringing because you're towing this boat.
Got it.
Great.
You know what time it is, jack?
No, what time is it?
It's tow time baby!
Yes!
Mike, says that towing on the road
seriously changes how your truck drives.
Since your vehicle is hauling around a lot
of additional weight, it's braking power and handling
are diminished.
So you should drive slower, keep a wider
distance between other cars, and be extra careful on turns.
Mike points out one other thing you definitely
don't want to forget--
the trailer can significantly change your clearance.
You've got to be careful of power lines, right?
Low hanging branches.
Right.
There's a lot to think about.
And the way this truck performs is
going to be a little different.
Another thing to think about--
who will back up the truck at the marina?
Luckily, Mike's co-worker Ryan Pszczolkowski answers our call
and agrees to meet us there.
We're going to see a pro at work.
Hey how are ya?
Good, how are you?
- Hey, you want to hop in and show us the proper way
to back a boat down into the water?
I'll do it for you.
OK.
It's really important to have a spotter when
you're backing up a trailer.
Ryan can't see everything that's going on behind this boat,
so we want to be here to tell him
in case he's about to hit the dock.
Right.
So Ryan's doing a great job.
He's got back his boat down until it actually
starts to float.
You want to be constantly checking your mirrors.
Looks good, Ryan.
Did you set the parking brake?
Sure did.
That's pretty important.
Yeah, well, if you've got a lot of weight back here,
we don't want the truck slipping back into the water.
So now Ryan's going to set the boat up so that it can actually
be launched into the water.
Ready?
Nice.
Thanks, Ryan.
So we got the boat in the water.
Right.
Now Ryan's going to pull the truck and the trailer back out.
And this is where four wheel drive comes in pretty handy,
which this truck has, because these boat launches can
be pretty slippery.
All of our work has paid off.
Yeah!
Now we can take this baby out in the water.
[LAUGHTER]
Let's do it.
Ready?
Fire it up.
Oh, yeah.
Woo!
High five.
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