Re: Trailer Towing Question - tires (or tyres)

Posted by Don Wadge on August 24, 2005 at 07:20:36 from (205.200.65.5):

In Reply to: Re: Trailer Towing Question - tires (or tyres) posted by Nolan on August 24, 2005 at 05:03:03:

Nolan, your comments are very relevant. I like what you said about tongue weight being the most overblown issue. Tongue weight is somewhat a result of where you have to have your load placed in order to not have any appreciable amouint of weight behind your rear trailer axle. If tongue weight is too heavy I don't think it is too much of a control issue unless it makes you light on the front end, but it will make it a harder as in heavier load to pull and if the rear end of your tow vehicle is not stable for what ever reason you will be hearding the vehicle down the road. Not too many of the posts took issue with the tow vehicle rear tires which is probably the root of his problem. Same thing happens when your rear tires are underinflated with no trailer behind and most of us have had that experience. They are either underinflated for the job or not a stable (stiff) enough side wall. I think what happened here is that when he had his load far enough forward for a good tow the rear of the tow vehicle wiggled and when he moved the load back to reduce tongue weight suitable to the tow vehicle (tires) the load was too far back for good trailer performance. This too is where a longer trailer helps because you can load it so that you do not have any appreciable load behind your rear axle yet because of the length of the trailer this does not result in an appreciable gain in tongue weight.
In my experience you need to load the hitch with a sufficient amount of weight in order to give adequate weight to the tow vehicle for control purposes but really the trailer should run itself. In other words you should not expect to stop the trailer with your tow vehicle. The trailer brakes should stop the trailer and load and the tow vehicle provides the pull and the directional control. Much of this is something everyone has to learn for themselves it seems. I've had several tailers from short to long. I've used passenger tires on the trailer and I've used trailer tires on the trailer. As for control the tires on the trailer are of far lesser importance than those on the rear of the tow vehicle. I did not have any control problems using passenger tires on the trailer. For the past few years I have a 24' triple axle bumper hitch trailer. If I'm hauling a tractor I usually get the best performance with the rear axle of the tractor sitting right between my rear 2 trailer axles.

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