If you have some idea about towing and tongue weight then you’d already know how overly weighted tongues can end up getting into improper situations. It’s almost similar to driving a vehicle that comes with oval-shaped tires.
Can you imagine the awkwardness that the wobbly ride will bring you? That’s exactly how the tongue with too much weight will feel like. It becomes extremely hard to stay in a lane. And also, this whole thing is a huge gamble you’d play with your overall safety. So, knowing how to reduce tongue weight on a trailer is clearly very important.
Here’s Everything About How to Reduce Tongue Weight on a Trailer.
From what we’ve caught from several towing community, a trailer’s tongue weight actually refers to the mass that applies toward your tow vehicle’s hitch, usually a truck. Before getting into the ways or thoughts behind reducing the overall tongue weight of a trailer, there are a few things you need to be aware of.
First of all, the good tongue weight for travel variants is usually somewhere between nine to fifteen percent of overall net weight counted in pounds. You can consider it as a reliable rule of thumb. And it works in partnership with a few important variables of course. Also, remember that the whole weight capacity decreasing issue is actually a straightforward trying of overall weight redistribution or cargo adjustments.
The “60% Goes to Front” Rule.
When you are trying to load cargo, make sure to follow this 60% or 3/5 of whole weight in front strategy. This is simply meaning you need to bring the cargo to trailer’s front half while making it centered evenly. And this should be roughly 60% weight of the whole load. Let’s assume you have a trailer of 3000 pounds. And it needs to load 1500 pounds of cargo. In such a case, you need to roughly place 3/5 of the overall cargo weight in your trailer’s front half. This means around 900 pounds.
Hitch Ball’s Height
It’s very helpful for weight reduction if you decide to bring your hitch ball’s height to a certain way so that the tow-vehicle can easily tow as level as possible. This is a great area to work on when you want to decrease the tongue weight.
If you are in a situation where choosing between a slight bit lower or higher than level is necessary, then go for the first option. This will help you most when the trailer’s ball is holding above trailer.
Never Miss with The Weight Capacity Rating.
The manufacturer probably has recommended a weight capacity rating. And you must never go beyond that ratings to pressurize your trailer hitch’s towing capacity. Now if you decide to upgrade the towing capability of your vehicle by buying a powerful weight distribution hitch, then things are fine. Also make sure you know how to put a hitch on a car properly.
This way you won’t be suffering from any limitation and enjoy the maximum capability of your towing vehicle. Some, however, don’t know about this. And that’s why even when their trailer can handle more weight, because of the less capacity standard hitch, they end up limiting whole weight.
So, buying a stronger or high rated trailer hitch that allows your truck’s complete weight holding capacity is very critical and often the right way to go for rather than reducing mass.
Adding Accessories of Sway Control.
There are some travel trailer hitch accessories meant for sway control. Adding these can be a huge solution for tackling such issues. And you don’t even have to move your cargo with such a solution. Sometimes that’s the situation, you actually cannot move cargo for balancing overall weight.
Now one thing to keep in mind about weight-distribution hitch is that these don’t allow any change to whole tongue weight. It’s just going to enhance the handling matter. And there’s nothing to do with changing the capacity of towing.
Moving the Cargo
This is helpful for both situations of less or more weight with a travel trailer tongue. And that’s about redistributing the whole weight. It may take you more than a few attempts to move things into its right place that makes whole weight management properly done.
Usually, you need to follow a very basic rule of thumb here. And it’s to move payload onto the trailer front or rear area. In the case of increasing weight, you need to do simply transfer payload on front.
Wrap Up
And that’s quite everything about how to reduce tongue weight on a trailer. Hopefully, it will help you to get the problems solved. And the overall weight will reduce as it should. The whole safety of your transportation will be at risk if such weight consideration is not a thing that you really care about. So be concerned about it and make sure you’re not dealing with any errors.
