(calm music)
- For some, towing a trailer
can seem like a monumental task.
The very thought of hooking up a trailer
to the back of your truck is enough
to send a shiver down your spine,
and make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.
Never fear, it's a lot less scary than it seems.
Still, there are quite a few things to be aware of
when towing a trailer.
I'm Dustin with Custom Offsets,
and in this video,
we're gonna be covering just a few of the basics of towing,
and answering the question, are you towing wrong?
Before we hook up the safety chains
and lock down the couplers though,
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Right off the bat let's get this out of the way.
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All right, right off the bat, let's get this out of the way.
We're not the Department of Transportation,
and this is not road legal transportation 101.
For best results on that consult with your local DOT
as rules and regulations change,
depending on the vehicle size, weight, location, et cetera.
When it comes to trailers there are two main types,
bumper pull trailers and bed pull trailers.
For simplicity sake, we're grouping goosenecks
and 5th wheel trailers together
as they function generally speaking the same behind a truck
into that bed pull category.
Bumper pull trailers, get their name from back in the day
when people would actually put a ball hitch on their bumper
and tow the trailer around.
This method of hooking up a trailer to your truck
was pretty ineffective,
as it offered almost no adjustability
to the height of the ball,
and also wasn't super strong.
To combat this, companies began producing
what is more commonly known as a receiver hitch.
This receiver hitch is a fabricated piece of tube steel,
that is designed to bolt to the frame of the vehicle,
being much more solid
and thus allowing you to tow more weight.
Bumper pull trailers are the more common of the two,
especially with smaller trailers and lighter loads,
as they offer much more simplicity and ease of use
when towing for your average truck owner.
On the other side of the coin is the gooseneck
or 5th wheel trailers.
And while technically different
in how they connect to the truck,
the general principle is the same.
Rather than connecting to the trailer
at the rear of the truck,
these trailers actually come over the top of the tailgate,
and connect to a coupler mounted in the bed,
thus being referred to as bed pull trailers.
These trailers are designed to put the weight of the trailer
on top of, or slightly ahead of the rear axle.
Doing so, prevents the tongue weight of the trailer
from lifting the front axle of the truck
like a bumper pull trailer would.
As an added bonus it also allows you
to pull a longer trailer as the turning radius
will be reduced significantly
with the trailer pivoting from the center of the bed,
versus the rear bumper.
Goosenecks and 5th wheels are most commonly used
on larger flatbed trailers, large campers,
or other longer, harder to maneuver trailers,
that need an extra turning radius.
One of the most important things when towing
is knowing your weight.
No, I'm not talking about what the scale says
when you step on it in the bathroom,
I'm talking about capacities.
Before hooking up your trailer,
be sure to verify the weight rating of your hitch,
your receiver, and of your trailer.
All of these weight ratings
can usually be found either stamped into a steel plate
on the trailer, or on a decal placed on the hitch itself.
Once you've verified that everything is ready to roll,
you could hook up your trailer and get it loaded.
Now there's a lot of things to consider
when loading a trailer
and we won't have time to touch on all of them today.
With that being said, though, there is one thing
that we should cover really quick,
and that's load distribution.
For a first time trailer tower,
this may seem like a pretty small deal,
but how you load your trailer matters.
When loading your trailer it's important
to distribute the weight on the trailer evenly
and over the axles as much as possible.
This will keep the load balanced
and keep you from putting too much weight
on the truck itself,
causing the truck to work much harder than really necessary.
In addition, if you put the weight
too far back on the trailer,
you can actually cause trailer to weave aggressively
back and forth as the weight is being thrown side to side,
similar to the example shown.
One last consideration
when towing trailers is your driving habits.
Now when towing, it's important to remember
that your truck will take longer to do
well, pretty much everything.
Due to the added weight of the load,
things like getting up to speed
and slowing down when you need to,
will both take more time and distance.
Because of this
we always recommend being a defensive driver
anytime you're towing a trailer,
as this will both keep you safe,
but also give you the most time to react
to any challenging situation that may arise
while on the road.
Are you towing a trailer wrong?
Do you have any tips or tricks for us?
Let us know down in the comments below
and as always, if you need wheels, tires, or suspension,
for your tow rig or your show truck
that you put on the trailer, check us out,
customoffsets.com.
Peace.