3 Easy Steps to Load & Tow Your Travel Trailer

This year, many families have returned to the good old fashioned road trip. The airport has so many germs, and the airplane is impossible to keep virus-free. Plus, gasoline is incredibly cheap right now. When families want to get out of town, the best choice of transportation is clear: a road trip bringing all your stuff along! This way, you won’t need to stop in hotels or restaurants.

Although you can just show up and get on a plane, there’s a bit of preparation you’ll want to do before leaving. One of the most important things is getting your hitch on. Getting your hitch on correctly will make your road trip safer and easier. Here are three easy steps to load and tow your travel trailer:

Step 1: Loading

How you pack your gear into your travel trailer can greatly affect the tongue weight of your RV. 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 the RV and it can be dangerous to pull down the road at high speeds. 

When packing, pay attention to what you put where. Do not load all of your heavy items toward the back of the RV or in one spot. Your RV 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 in cabinets or on shelves. 

Step 2: Equalize

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 tow vehicle’s ability to turn, brake, and steering if you have a large load.

Step 3: Sway Control

Before you leave, you’ll also want to make sure of sway controls. They use friction to 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. Once these are set, you can climb in and head out!

There you have it! With these simple steps you can get your trailer connected and hit the open road in no time at all.