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Towed a 16' trailer yesterday with wood beams. Beams were not evenly distributed (first mistake).
Truck wandered above 45mph - had to use back roads. Truck is '15 with max tow package. Also, trailer brake said 'no trailer'.
Notice large beams not evenly distributed
Majority of weight behind wheels of trailer
Last edited by 97G8tr; Sep 26, 2015 at 10:25 AM.
Reason: spelling correct
Yep, looks like not enough tongue weight for sure.. Get more tongue weight and it'll tow much better.
As for the brakes, it looks like the trailer has 'surge' brakes, so the trucks electric brake controller had nothing to 'control'.. Was it just a flat 4 plug for the trailer? Or the round 7 pin?
aren't 7pin connectors used for RV's? What I know about surge brakes is it should be bled in order to work properly. The maintenance can be troublesome since trailer's brakes must be serviced regularly which involves checking and/or replacing the lines, replacement of leaking or corroded lines and fittings, changing the brake fluid, and others.
Reason why truck wandered was because you took weight off the back end. Should have got a hammer and smacked boards closer to front. Valuable lesson learned from that.
That’s a scary situation and I’m glad you caught it before it turned into something worse. Rust creeping up on critical parts like the cross member can be easy to overlook until real weight is applied. You’re absolutely right, safety chains wouldn’t have helped once the whole assembly was compromised. What you mentioned also reminds me that in operations where trucks are regularly towing, proper inspections and maintenance planning are just as important as how you scale your business. Scalability – as you add more trucks, dispatchers can manage the increased workload without you needing to hire extra in-house staff, and resources like AVN Logistics show how this support structure keeps things running smoothly even as fleets grow. It’s a good reminder that preventive care and organized https://avnlogisticstm.com/oversize-overweight-permits/ overweight permit services.
I agree about the tongue weight. It needs to be between 10-15% of the trailer weight to prevent trailer sway. Your load looks like the tongue weight was almost zero. The load you were carrying makes it difficult to get the proper tongue weight though, because the boards would have had to extend beyond the front of the trailer.
You MAY have overloaded your hitch too, if you were using only a simple drawbar in the receiver. Those are normally limited to 500# towing weight. I think you need to use a Weight Distributing Hitch (WDH) with that load.
If the truck did not "see" the trailer, then, if you have electric brakes back there, they weren't connected.
