Towing Question

Let's bring that pix around here again first ....



OK .........

A DEAD WEIGHT load without any load-shifting assistance, is limited to 400lbs on a MAXIMUM GROSS WEIGHT 4,000lb trailer. That's 10% of the trailer is dead weight on the ball --- just like a 400lb fat lady standing on it and dropping the rear of the car to the rubber baby buggy-bumper stops.

An Equalizer-style hitched trailer can have a MAXIMUM GROSS WEIGHT of 7,600lbs and have a tongue weight of 912lbs.

TYPICALLY - you want about 10-15% of the whole trailer weight as a dead weight on the hitch ball.

Here's the Lawyerland Worm Warning and Absolution Words on that placard:

At one point you are only pulling what you tow and carrying just a small percentage of it.

A weight distributing hitch assy will UP the value of what you tow, weight-wise, by transferring the ball load back onto the trailer and also at the same time sending part of that weight equally to all 4 wheels of the towing vehicle.

It's a complicated concept but I remember the Valley Hitch guy coming by my shop in the late 1960s with an Oldsmobile Toronado and one of their load-equalizing hitches --- and he had no rear wheels on the car.

ALL the weight was transferred to the front wheels - and although this was not recommended as a working model - it showed how the hitch worked by keeping the heavy dead weight off the ball and sent it to all the wheels including those of the trailer - back onto the ground.

If you keep the nose weight bias correct --- and that is usually 10-15% of the total trailer weight - on the ball as a way to keep the trailer from pushing the tow vehicle around, then --- theoretically - yes --- the towing weight is limited by the horsepower created by the towing vehicle - and the combined brakes of both the trailer and the vehicle.

Pulling of rolling weight isn't too much of a problem --- up to a point ---- it's bearing/carrying that weight, accelerating and stopping it well and of course: steering with it in tow.

FTR ---> locomotives don't carry the weight of all the cargo cars behind it --- it just pulls and stops it --- although each car has it's own brakes to help.

You don't carry all the weight with a load-bearing hitch --- you just send that weight somewhere else --- minus the percentage of that weight to keep the trailer weight bias correct.

I tow approximately 10,000 lbs of wood from where I cut the trees - on the highway with my TB using a weight distributing hitch and 2-axle electric brakes on the trailer. I keep the speed at controllable values and anticipate turns, braking areas and where to downshift and where to just use the brakes.

I use a Reese 1,000lb equalizing hitch spring set, 2 5/16" ball and dual sway controls with both trailer axles having electric brakes.

I found the picture .....