Learn Me: Trailer Security

spitfirebill wrote: As much as I hate to admit it, I did have trailer come unhitched once. It was still attacehd with the sfafety chains, but slammed against the truck several times before I could stop. Apparently I had forgotten to fip down the lever thingamajigger. I had traveled maybe 15 miles like that and it only came off when I crossed a major intersection that had a really rough crossing.

I did that a few weeks ago, thankfully only moving a cabinet from the house to the garage. Stepped on the ramp and up went the front of the trailer. Never again will I forget that.

SVreX wrote: I also feel strongly about balancing the load properly (often overlooked).

This.

I used to tow a tandem axle trailer with a car on it (Neon, CRX, FB RX-7) using a Ford Ranger and that setup was extremely sensitive to tongue weight. I found that just about 3 inches of placement forward would have the whole rig wagging back and forth violently at anything north of about 58mph. 3 inches of placement rearward meant really sketchy steering. When I wised up and started towing with a full size van, I noticed that the difference in placement wasn't quite that extreme, but even still when I put a car on the trailer for the first time, I can tell in about 2 miles on the highway if it's not in the right spot -- the whole rig is just more stable when it's balanced. I've not had any sort of wagging or light steering in the van (it's either just heavy enough to bulldog through what the trailer does or I'm not mal-loading the trailer that badly), but I can definitely tell a difference.

Trailer brakes and break-aways are required in a lot of states, too, so at a bare minimum, make sure your trailer meets those requirements of the states you'll be trailering through. Having a good brake controller and having it adjusted properly are quite important. If your brakes are too grabby, you'll destabilize the whole thing if you touch the brakes in a turn, and if they're set too low you'll tax your tow rig's brakes while creating greater stopping distances. Nothing can bring a misbehaving trailer in line more quickly than easing off the gas and oh-so-gradually engaging only the trailer brakes; make sure you're familiar with that and have some muscle memory developed.

The single most important thing, however, no matter how new or well-equipped your trailer and/or truck are/is: How you're driving it. The last time I took a parts car to the scrapper I looked at the scale and with most of a car on the trailer, my total weight was right around 10,000 pounds. I realize that in the great scheme of things, there are plenty of larger commercial vehicles out there and a lot of them are driven pretty carelessly, but when I'm pulling out of the driveway headed for a RallyCross or whatever, I remind myself that I've got a five ton vehicle under my command and I can ruin someone's whole life if anything were to go wrong. Something dodgy happening with the trailer can escalate into a disaster very quickly when you also add in inattentiveness, too much velocity, not enough distance to the car in front of you, bad position on the road, and so on.

You know... I just realized that I'm being paranoid about an old rusty trailer that needs to be hitched in order to drive the vehicle up the ramps otherwise the tongue goes about 45 degrees northward. If I can drive a 1 1/2 ton car onto its edge and it stays hitched, I think I'm in good shape.

Thanks for the input guys. I'm going to add some new chains in because the current ones can't cradle the tongue and wrap the hitch with a chain anyway.

Here's a taste: