Do You Actually Know How to Tow?

We are talking about towing trailers here. Your Saturday morning trip to the tip often goes without incident. If you do have an incident its usually because your less than road legal trailer was pinged for being unregistered, fined for having only 30% of the lights on it working, booked for allowing your vegetation to blow all over the freeway because your bright blue tarp was just not up to the task or in rare cases you felt the need a wheel bearing service was not needed for the past eleven years. You’re now on the side of the road with a policeman, while passers by reduce speed by twenty kilometres just to stare at you or you are one of these people watching your trailer wheel overtake you.
Rarely do you find yourself with a flipped trailer. When this happens the trailer can flip the vehicle too, or push the car off the road resulting in a serious accident. What is it that often causes this? Granted a lack of decent servicing is definitely an issue particularly with wheel bearings. However the main reasons trailers like to take their automotive dates for a trip through the foliage on the side of the freeway is due to incorrect weight distribution when loading a trailer.
This issue is very common with car trailers. NEVER, EVER back a car onto a car trailer. By reversing the car on you are putting the engine at the rear of the trailer. with the majority of the weight at the back, problems are about to start. If you look at the video below it demonstrates the behaviour your Mustang (or Toyota Camry) carries out with different weight distribution options.
The second most common set up we see causing this is often tradesman with large loads of sediment. Dirt, besa blocks, brick or stone. When transporting this stuff don’t overdo the load. Two trips is better than a write off. Additionally make sure you evenly distribute the load.
Grey Nomads, whilst travelling thirty kilometres below the speed limit on a dual carriageway and no one can overtake you, make sure you have not loaded all your holiday gear into the rear of your caravan, right with the kitten which already adds extra weight. Its not rocket science all you have to do is distribute the weight as evenly as possible.


 
 

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