4 Warning Signs Your Travel Trailer Is Overloaded (And What to Do About It) | Ep 68

 Your travel trailer is usually warning you long before something fails. 

In this episode of RV Canucks, we’re talking about 4 major travel trailer problems that should NEVER be happening — and why most of them are completely preventable. 

We cover: 

•  trailer tires rubbing the wheel wells, 
•  repeated RV tire blowouts, 
•  excessive truck squat when towing, 
•  and trailers that don’t tow straight down the highway. 

The common thread behind all of them? Hidden weight and poor loading habits.
 
We also dive into the sneaky ways RVs become overloaded over time:
 

•  full water tanks, 
•  tools and spare parts, 
•  generators, 
•  e-bikes, 
•  camping gear, 
•  solar upgrades, 
•  batteries, 
•  and renovations that quietly add hundreds of pounds. 

Plus, we explain one of the biggest misunderstandings in RVing:
 
Your trailer’s GVWR does NOT assume your tanks are full.
 
If you tow a travel trailer, fifth wheel, or toy hauler, this episode could save you from expensive repairs, dangerous towing issues, or a roadside disaster.
 
 
In This Episode
 

•  What “tire rub” means and why it happens 
•  Signs your RV suspension may be overloaded 
•  Why repeated tire blowouts are rarely just bad luck 
•  How improper cargo loading affects towing stability 
•  What excessive truck squat is really telling you 
•  Why your trailer may not be towing straight 
•  The hidden weight RV owners commonly overlook 
•  Why water tanks dramatically affect trailer weight 
•  Understanding GVWR, payload, axle ratings, and cargo capacity 
•  Practical ways to reduce trailer weight safely 

Check out Episode 22 for more on the "Weight Budget" and why it matters

Key Takeaway
 
Most catastrophic RV failures start as small preventable problems.
 
Your trailer usually gives warning signs first — the key is recognizing them before they become expensive or dangerous.
 
Listener Question
 
What’s one thing you removed from your RV and realized you never actually needed?
 

Transcript

0 (0s):
Most major RV problems don't happen out of nowhere. Usually your trailer is warning you long in advance. Today we're gonna talk about four things that can go wrong and why all of them in our opinion, are completely preventable.

1 (12s):
Yep. So we're gonna talk about your tires rubbing the inside of your wheel wells. We're gonna talk about repeated blowouts of your tires. We're talk about the truck squatting hard after you've hooked up the hitch. And we're gonna talk about your trailer not towing straight or tracking down the road comfortably or naturally.

0 (30s):
And there is a common denominator behind all of these and it is weight. But first we wanna welcome you to the RV Connects podcast. We are Canada's RV podcast for weekend warriors and part-time RVs. This is season six and we are on episode 68.

1 (45s):
Hi Molina. Hi

0 (46s):
Dan.

1 (48s):
So I think the first thing we wanna talk about is tires hitting the inside of the wheel wells repeatedly. And this is not a normal thing, like if this is happening to you, you should be asking some other questions. And by that we mean you're driving down the road and you know your trailer's moving up and down and it, it will move up and down normally, but if it's repeatedly coming down and hitting the top of your wheels, that's not normal. Right. And, and we had a few people reach out to us about this and it and iss not really like after 70,000 kilometers of towing and taking the best that Nova Scotia and Michigan have, it hasn't happened to us that I can think of. And it certainly, if it has happened, it hasn't done any damage.

1 (1m 28s):
So this is not normal And I think we need to talk about it. Yeah.

0 (1m 31s):
And maybe first I'll set up what the risk is when this happens. I mean Dan will talk about the obvious kind of mechanical things, but when this is happening, it's called tire rub. So picture the underbelly of your trailer. A lot of trailers just have a basic underbelly. Sometimes a co a coating protective. But if that is constantly rubbing, that is gonna wear away. And what that's doing is that's exposing the wood on the bottom of your trailer to all of the elements and road splash that happens, which is also an additional risk for water penetration.

1 (1m 57s):
Right. So there's a couple of things you can do to just keep an eye on things. So one is obviously when you check your tires for wear, like look up and make sure there hasn't been any damage inside the wheel. Well, and it's completely possible that maybe you, you pick up a stone or a piece of garbage in it throws it up there that, I mean that could be the cause as well. But I think you will know that if you're frequently bottoming out your trailer, you will know that you have bottomed out the trailer in the wheel. Well take a look at your suspension regularly. Doesn't need to be really complex. You're looking for stuff that just doesn't look right to you. You know, is a bolt missing? Is there look like there's maybe a leaf spring is broken, something cracks you, you will know that something doesn't look right and then you can address that with a, a technician later.

1 (2m 40s):
And then you should know how much capacity your trailer can hold. Like how much cargo can you put in inside of your trailer? These are important things to know. There's probably a population of people that, you know, what we're talking about here is 90% of us drive on highways and regularly maintain roads to go to a state park, to go to an RV park, to go to a provincial park. And you maybe you drive down a gravel road the last couple of kilometers or into your campsite, like that's normal usage. So, so you should not be having these problems if you're just going away for the weekend or you're going on a, a common road trip. If you are a person that camps on crown land or BLM land or you're an outdoors enthusiast and you're going off road, like we're not talking about that conversation right now.

1 (3m 29s):
Those people probably brought an off-road type trailer. You know, we see them at the RV shows and they can put an a TV on them for, for example, the tires are a bit more aggressive. The suspension might be raised like they've gone and bought a more aggressive off-road trailer. We're not talking about that group right now. We're talking about the rest of us. And I think that if you are thinking that the solution to your problem is to raise the suspension of your trailer or to add to the suspension of your trailer, that's probably not the solution. Something else is driving this if it's happening and you need to look at what that is and that that's weight. And I think what happens is that you can very easily get extra weight into your trailer, right?

1 (4m 11s):
And then you're going to have other repeated problems. And the, maybe the analogy I'll use to describe this is if you're making coffee and toast in the morning and you plug in the toaster and you plug in the coffee maker and you blow the breaker once you reset the breaker. But if every morning you blow the breaker, you move the toaster or you move the coffee maker around the kitchen so that you don't blow the breaker. So if repeatedly bottoming out or you're repeatedly blowing a tire, that's an indicator that something else is going wrong. So that's what we're talking about.

0 (4m 40s):
Yeah. And I think it's, this conversation is probably, maybe it's, maybe it's controversial maybe, but I think it's super important because I think, you know, like the internet is a very large and varied place, right? So I think somebody ha has these problems and then they'll go on a Facebook group or they'll go on the internet and they'll look and they'll see that other people have these issues and then suddenly it becomes like a commonplace issue when truly, truly this should not happen if your trailer is loaded properly. So maybe that's a good transition into talking about the overload and how it happens because a lot of trailers and a lot of you know, setups will not look overloaded and you don't wake up one day and there's 2000 extra pounds in your trailer. Like I think it happens over time. So let's talk maybe a little bit about how that happens and what to watch out for and what you truly, truly need so that we're not kind of creating some of these problems.

1 (5m 28s):
Yeah, so let's just talk about the first one. The first hidden weight is water. If you have 36 gallons of fresh water on your trailer, so if you have gone and filled up your fresh water at home so you don't have to wait in the lineup at the park, you've just added 300 pounds to your trailer, 36 gallons of water weighs 300 pounds. And that's if you have a 36 gallon tank. If you have a bigger trailer, it weighs more. Now if you think that you're on a road trip and you've got 36 gallons of fresh water, that 36 gallons of fresh water has to go somewhere, which means that 30, 36 gallons of water ends up in your, your gray water tank or your black water tank. And maybe you've gone and topped up your fresh water because you were running out of fresh water. And now you can start to see how very quickly you start to get up to 600 pounds of water, for example.

1 (6m 11s):
So you're adding extra weight into your trailer. So if you're, if you're listening to this in the car and you're riding along with your husband or your wife and you're like, oh my god, we might be overweight if we put water in at the filling station. Like that's not what we're talking about. Like the last two or three kilometers to your campsite is not what we're talking about. We're talking about adding this extra water in. Just thinking that it's convenient. You shouldn't, you should probably rethink that. We have talked about carrying a little bit of water when we're on a road trip, right?

0 (6m 37s):
Yeah, I would say mostly though, if you're in a position where you think we're on a road trip, we might need to put some water in the tank, it's usually a longer road trip, which means you're probably also bringing things that you normally wouldn't for your regular weekend trip. 'cause you wanna make sure you have everything for your big long road trip, which kind of amplifies the weight problem in my eyes. So I mean, traditionally speaking, like if we're going from Ontario to Key West or Ontario to California or Ontario to Banff or Ontario to Nova Scotia, those are all very, you know, long trips with varied geography and different things on the road that's gonna tax your tow vehicle. And I would say to that, like we, we actively boondock, we sleep in parking lots when we're trying to get somewhere on a long trip.

0 (7m 20s):
And you can completely get away with just, you know, pouring some bottled water in the sink over your toothbrush to brush your teeth at night and doing the same to flush the toilet. So we're in a state where very, very, very rarely will we put water in our tank when we're, we're we're traveling. And if it is, it's just like a tiny little amount. But I would say more often than not our fresh water is empty.

1 (7m 40s):
Yeah. And that's what I'm trying to say is if you have heard us say that we do that, understand we only put a few gallons in there, not certainly not a full tank. Yeah. So that's kind of your first hidden weight is your water and you don't think about it because it's in a holding tank underneath your trailer and you don't see it, you don't see it, you don't think about it. Okay,

0 (7m 58s):
So what about the onsite garage?

1 (8m 0s):
Well the onsite garage, you know, we all break something, we don't ever want that to happen again. So we throw in that one little tool, that one spare part. You should travel with a couple of spare parts and by spare parts, I mean like maybe you're gonna have a couple of light bulbs, a few fuses, maybe some duct tape, the kind of things that get you through a relatively straightforward breakdown. You're maybe not gonna make a full repair just enough to like save the night, save the evening, get to somewhere where you can do it properly. The other part is the toolbox. And so when you go to the, you know, Canadian Tire, home Depot and you buy that little tool kit and it's got a hammer and a wrench and some ratchets and screwdrivers, like that's kind of what you should all have. But then we're, we're all guilty of this I think to one extent to another.

1 (8m 44s):
We add in an extra set of pliers, we add in a bigger wrench, we add in, you know, an electrical meter, we add in, we add in, we add in. And before you know it, you've got a hardware store

0 (8m 53s):
Even to consider this. I mean we camp at provincial parks, the rule of thumb now is have an extension to your power cord, right? Because you could be 10 meters from a post, you could be 110 meters from a post. And those cords are heavy. So if you think of just the weight of one extension cord and if you have two of those that you aren't considering, you're like, oh well it's just, it's just a power cord, right? Like all of that stuff adds up.

1 (9m 19s):
Really when you think about it, you should yes have a simple toolkit of some wrenches and ratchets, you know, kind of the the little kit that you could buy at Canadian Tire and Home Depot and enough to change a spare tire. That's what you actually need when you actually think about it. If your trailer breaks, the only time you can't actually use your trailer is if it has a flat tire, the water pump can go, you can still sleep in it. Propane can be empty, you can still sleep in it. You might be cold but you can still sleep in it. You know, you even if you blew a fuse, you're gonna have to get the flashlight out. If your trailer has a flat tire, you're not going anywhere. So the point of that is don't bring anything more than you probably absolutely need.

1 (10m 0s):
And if you're looking to shave a couple of pounds off, take a look at that kit that you keep underneath your trailer that's got the things that you use once or twice a year for seasonal maintenance, like lubricants for your slides or lubricants for your seals. Put it in a little bin. If you're gonna bring it on one trip, bring it on one trip. Do what you need to do, take it back out when you get home and put it back in the garage because you know, 10 dimes make a nickel, four quarters make a dollar. And it's all the little things that start to add up. So don't bring the hardware stores what we're trying to say.

0 (10m 31s):
I think you need to look at it as like possibility versus probability. And if, if something is more possible to happen or more probable to happen while you're on a trip, then you then you wanna have something to help you so you're not running out. But case in point, last year at Inver Huron we had a leak in the shower, we had some Pex connectors but they weren't the right ones and we're 10 minutes from home hardware in King Carton, right? So there is a case to be made if you were towing a travel trailer and you have a vehicle if there's something you need, there's a Canadian tire or a home hardware or a Home Depot usually within 20 minutes of where you're camping. And so if there is something that you truly need, you can run out and get it.

1 (11m 10s):
And it's never one extra thing that puts you overweight. It's the, the culmination of everything of we're in sync honey. It's the, it's the culmination of all those things that put you over. And that's why I say 10 dime make a dollar. Yeah.

0 (11m 22s):
Well let's talk about gear then. 'cause I think this is a big one. We're we've been guilty of it in the past, well I would call it a gear explosion but it's more gear creep so let's talk about that.

1 (11m 31s):
I think it is gear creep. You know I think that you know, you add in two e-bikes and then you add in a generator and you add in a Blackstone griddle and some extra lawn chairs and a six foot table and a mat and a a picnic shelter and firewood. Now you've added several hundred pounds into the trailer. Maybe you tossed on kayaks and kayaks come with paddles and life jackets. And so couple of ideas here. One is pack for the trip that you're going on. So when we go on a longer trip we talk about whether we're going to need our bikes or not and and we sometimes we bring our bikes, sometimes we leave them at home. We talk about like how are we going to eat most of our meals?

1 (12m 14s):
If your family goes to a park and you set up for the weekend and cooking food and gathering around the picnic table and playing games is part of that, then bring what you need to make that happen. We're not saying don't do it, but you don't need to pack the griddle and the barbecue and the camp stove and the cast iron and everything else. Think about what it is you actually need and then leave everything else behind at home. If you add on e-bikes, sure they give you lots of extra mobility and sure it was easy to push it up and down the driveway and you probably found a way to load it into your trailer. But the weight starts to add up and that's where you start to go a little bit sideways

0 (12m 53s):
To the meal point of view. It's super, super important for a weekend camper to meal plan. Like just sit down and make a list of what you're going to eat for what meal, you know, what meals you can make and make the leftovers into a different meal and that's gonna indicate what kind of equipment you need to take. And I will say, so we think very carefully. Bikes is probably the big one for us. We don't have e-bikes, we have regular pedal bikes but we talk about like for this trip, like are we going to bring the bikes and every single time we've said throw them on just in case. And every time we've been on the fence we haven't used them and they've just sat there the whole time. So we know we have a good idea if we're going to somewhere like Sauble Falls, it's not a huge park, it crosses a major road. Like it's not really big enough to bike ride. If we're going to Iran or McGregor or The Pinery, we know we're gonna be on our bikes every day.

0 (13m 37s):
So knowing the kind of campground we go to or if we're at like the KOA in Niagara Falls, we're probably not riding our bikes around there 'cause it's in the middle of the city and the park's kind of small so we leave our bikes at home And I think that's a, that's a huge indicator of like oh well we should bring it just in case you're probably not gonna use it and then you have to unpack it when you get home anyway. So yeah,

1 (13m 55s):
Like if somebody looks at you and says we should bring it just in case that was probably the first indicator to not bring it at all. Yeah, I think the next thing is upgrades to home comfort. Yeah like I think this is where we start to get some creeps. So we've now kind of talked about everything outside of the trailer and then we go inside the trailer at night and in the rain and what do we got?

0 (14m 12s):
It can be everything like home comfort, fine, you wanna have the comforts of home. That's why we all have trailers and we're not sleeping on the ground in a tent still. We want those comforts of home which is totally fine, totally valid. But when you think of this, the amount of people I know that have like taken out the the couch in their trailer and like went to IKEA and picked up something, you have to compare the weights of what you're taking out to what you're going in. If somebody has replaced their trailer mattress, which are generally fairly lightweights spring mattresses and you've replaced it with a full foam mattress, you're going to have a weight difference in that mattress that you've brought in. So there's like upgrades like that. But then there's also those other elements of like I never travel without my air fryer and my crockpot and my countertop ice maker like I don't know about you but our crockpot weighs like at least 10 pounds.

0 (14m 55s):
It's so heavy we don't bring it camping. But all of those things add up, right? I want my fancy coffee maker. Awesome. Pick the things that are most important to you and again, understand what you're gonna make while you're there. How long are you out and where are you going to pack it where it makes sense And we'll talk about that later in terms of like weight distribution, but that's also a big one as well. I think when people are shopping for trailers, like storage is the number one thing they look at. And so trailer manufacturers I think are doing a really good job of adding the ability to have more storage. But that doesn't mean you need to fill it

1 (15m 25s):
And you know what? We can be guilty of that as much as the next person in our lives where you tend to want to fill something up. I have never once gone into a trailer and said there's not enough storage in here. Yeah, never once, ever. So if you're like going in and making more storage in your trailer, I, I question if there's a underlying like you have too many knickknacks and stuff inside your trailer that we need to think about because I just don't know that that's helping your overall weight 'cause you're adding to the weight of the trailer and that's what may be causing some of the problems.

0 (15m 53s):
Now keep in mind ladies, this is a man who owns one hoodie, one pair of pants, one pair of shorts and like two pairs of shoes. So I definitely bring more things than he thinks is appropriate. But we consider the overall picture of the weight when we're packing.

1 (16m 7s):
And I think what I'm trying to say is like if you're brand new to RV and you're worried that you're bringing too much stuff and you're trying to thin stuff out, we're not talking about leaving your dishes and your cutlery and a couple of pots and pans in the trailer week to week or the fire poker. Like there are some baseline things that you're going to have in your trailer. We're talking about all the extra stuff that goes in the trailer. We have thinned some stuff out over the year. We don't bring a picnic shelter type thing anymore. If it rains we go inside the trailer and that's our thing. Like I'm not telling you you can't do that but it's a a balancing act for everybody. I think the rule of thumb in my head if we wanna keep this a little lighthearted is like the people who are attend camping should not be set up before you.

1 (16m 48s):
Right? Like if you have to like and bring out all the lawn chairs and the mat and the ice maker and the six foot table and the, and the and like maybe you've brought too much stuff. Okay

0 (16m 57s):
So I'm gonna, I'm gonna be devil's advocate here because our entire thing as a podcast and our entire thing as people is there's no wrong way to camp. Right? If that's what makes you happy and you want all those comforts of home, awesome. Just keep in mind that just because your trailer can carry something doesn't mean it's designed to tra to carry that thing when it comes to a weight perspective. So pick and choose if you want all of the comforts of home, awesome but you're going to have to make up that weight somewhere else. If you want the ice maker and the air fryer and the coffee maker and the crockpot like it's just about ensuring that you know what your weight limits are and you're coming in underneath them. So like no judgment on what you want bring, it's just don't be aware that all of these things add up.

1 (17m 40s):
Yeah a hundred percent. Yeah like listen we bring a Blackstone sometimes but we trade it off somewhere else. We don't bring the barbecue right? Right. So that's kind of where we're coming from for sure. This, there's another hidden one here that's a little, I kind of think this is almost as hidden as water. It's maybe not necessarily intuitive and that's battery and solar power. So you know, sure lithium batteries can be, can weigh less. You're absolutely right people, people want to have solar on their trailer. I think this is where people need to like maybe just take a step back and think about what is the impact that is to the trailer. So if you wanna replace one battery with a lith lithium battery, you might be reducing your weight.

1 (18m 23s):
But if during the process of replacing one heavy battery and replacing it with a a lighter one you decide to upgrade your power and add multiple batteries, you've actually may have just actually increased the amount of weight that you put on your trailer. So that's one area to be cautious of is adding too many batteries. Another area is solar so you can add solar to your trailer and there were probably people that camp off the grid or don't have shore power that need solar and that makes sense, right? Like I'm not saying don't do it if that's your kind of camping, but if you do 99% or 90% of all your camping and you're hooked up to shore power, I will make the argument that you can do it with one battery on your trailer If you're always plugged into shore power, you don't actually ever need solar and you don't ever actually really need the battery other than you know raising and lowering the jack when you're hitching up and you know popping into the trailer to turn on the lights when you put the groceries away at at Walmart or at Zers.

1 (19m 20s):
So think about what you actually need because you may not actually need it but in the kind of picking up on this, these trends that you see on social media of adding more lithium batteries, tering solar, it might not actually be for you. So these are things you should probably think about before you add on that weight.

0 (19m 36s):
And to that I would probably add that, I'll put the episode in the show notes 'cause I actually, I don't remember which episode it was specifically but it was earlier in season one or season two where we talked about when you're looking to purchase a new trailer and we talked about a price budget and a weight budget. And so we go into more detail there about like how to consider weight because I think people will buy the trailer and probably they're just under their max weight. But then you have to consider do I wanna make these upgrades in the future and if I do, how is that gonna affect my tow vehicle or my trailer? So think about that and if that's helpful to you, I would go back and listen to that episode 'cause it kind of goes into you know, a 30,000 foot view of how to consider your weight budget and how to, how to think about it.

1 (20m 16s):
And if you know that you need these things and you have some experience, then for sure go ahead and do them. If it makes sense if your trailer already came with some kind of solar system, I'm certainly not suggesting you rip out the solar system but if my kind of tip for new RVs is if you're not really sure then just go with what you got when you pulled off the dealership lot and see where you might actually come up short and you may find you don't actually need those extra batteries for example. And the example I will use is we use one of the cheapest deep cycle batteries that you can get at Canadian Tire and we boondock what, half a dozen nights last year. We never ran outta power, we were never not able to sleep. Right. We got what we needed, we moved on the next day, we never actually needed all the extra power we could have got from those sources.

1 (21m 0s):
Yeah right. And we have kind of made mistakes in the past. We have traveled and brought a generator and that was a no point, right? So we don't bring the generator anymore unless there's a very specific need,

0 (21m 12s):
Right? So let's talk a little bit about tires 'cause I think this is one that happens to people a lot And I'm gonna knock, actually I'm gonna knock on wood, everybody can hear that right? I'm gonna knock on wood before we go into this section because we're, we leave tomorrow for our shakedown trip. So I don't want any tire problems coming our way. But we've had our trailer for 10 years. Are we on our third set of tires?

1 (21m 34s):
I think we're on our, it came with a set and we've replaced them twice through regular

0 (21m 37s):
Maintenance. Yeah. So we're on our third set of tires. How many blowouts have we had? Zero. Zero. We've had one problem with the wheel bearing last year, which we've talked about on a previous episode, but I frequently see and hear from listeners and see on the internet that people experience multiple tire blowouts on the trailer. So let's talk about that aspect.

1 (21m 57s):
If you're having regular tire blowouts, that's not normal, what could cause a tire blowout? Well if you have old tires that haven't been maintained, that could be assigned. So if you've got a lot of kilometers and you blow one tire, you go to get it repaired and the the, the technician says you do gotta do all four. Do all four because chances are, you know, three weeks after that you're gonna blow the other tire. So, so do all four. We're not talking about, you know, you picked up a nail and had to get a a flat tire replaced. That's not what we're talking about. You know, not keeping an eye on your, your tire pressure, especially as the seasons change, right? So where we are in Ontario, like it was in single digits this morning, it'll go up to 30 degrees Celsius.

1 (22m 38s):
A few months from now we'll be in a heat wave like we're up and down. Keep an eye on your tire pressure. Don't just go out there and take a look at your tire pressure once in June and think that it's okay in July and August. Uneven loading and old tires and heat buildup like weight starts to play a factor in this. And when you add weight to the trailer, what you are doing is starting to add stress to the trailer and you may have added more stress than the trailer is capable of absorbing. So when your tires are old and you haven't done some maintenance, that's a thing. But if you have a trailer that's relatively new and you've just taken it off the lot and like say the last year, last year or two you haven't done a lot of kilometers, you should be okay.

1 (23m 20s):
But if you're starting to have problems like regular tire blowouts or you know, I've even heard of people say like you know, I'm on my third axle because my axle's bent, that's not normal. Like and I've told multiple trailers and we don't have a bent axle on any of those trailers over the years. So if you have one bent axle and you can tie it back to a specific event like a really bad pothole or a really rough trip or something like that, then I understand it. But if you are routinely thinking about having to replace something because it keeps braking, then it's not the component that is the problem and it's a good chance on suspension and tires. It's the actual weight inside the trailer of all the things we just talked about, the outdoor gear, the inside creature comforts, all of those things is starting to cause you a problem.

1 (24m 8s):
And that's the root cause of what you're talking about. And that's why I use the analogy of if you keep blowing the breaker with the toaster and the coffee maker, the problem is not the toaster and the coffee maker. The problem is what's inside the trailer that's causing you these problems.

0 (24m 21s):
So it's, I guess it's the principle of that these things don't happen for no reason. You have to go back and determine the root cause. And so we'll talk a little bit about weight distribution and what people I think sometimes forget is like it's not only loading front to back, it's loading side to side. And we'll talk about that maybe when we talk about our fourth item. 'cause I think that probably ties everything together where we can start talking about weight. But before that, let's talk about truck

1 (24m 43s):
Squat. Yeah, so when we talk about truck squat, you know you, you hook up your trailer, you get ready to pull away, we have all sat in the campground and we've looked at a person's rig and we've all said that guy's truck is really sagging. So you don't need to be an expert to diagnose this, you just need to recognize you have the problem and then you can engage an expert look at your trailer and you're honest with yourself that when you're hooked up to your truck there's a lot of squat, then you need to ask some questions. So the first thing I would say is there are people out there that are towing a trailer and maybe they don't have a weight distribution hitch. So the first solution to them would be to get a weight distribution hitch. A technician will take a, And I don't mean go on marketplace and buy a weight distribution hitch from somebody across town.

1 (25m 27s):
My recommendation would be to go to talk to a technician, buy a hitch appropriate to your vehicle and your trailer, have them install it and have them do the setup. I think

0 (25m 35s):
The setup is super important. And for reference, like our weight distribution hitch, our truck, I believe it's out a quarter inch when our trailer gets hooked up and that is all due to setup and making sure that the setup is accurate.

1 (25m 48s):
So that's the first thing. If you have a weight distribution hitch and you still have some sag, maybe you want to have somebody, a technician take a look at it and make sure that it's still set up. So how would you maybe not be still set up? Maybe you've changed tow vehicles over the years and you didn't actually think about change changing the, the setup of the hitch. Maybe you went from one truck to another truck and they're probably pretty close but every truck has a different rating, right? So you're probably not really, really bad but it still might be something that you need to consider. We have twice that I can think of now gone into poorly designed exits, entrance and exits to gas stations like malls, gas stations where we've hit so hard on the hitch, the sway bars came off, you know, nothing, there was no catastrophic failure.

1 (26m 29s):
You pull off to the side, you put it back together with the toolkit that I talked about, we still had somebody double check when I went in for something else to come out and make sure like it's okay, right? So if you've had some kind of hard hit through that, like I think that that's understandable. So we've kind of cleared out these kind of three things. If you have a truck and a trailer and the combination still has a squat after you've had somebody look at your weight distribution hitch, this is where you need to have honest is conversations with yourself and the technician and what you're doing. Because if your uncle or something you saw on the internet says put in airbags, that might not actually be the solution. And I'm not an expert, but this is what I know. If you put a airbag into your truck to level it out to make it look right, you haven't necessarily distributed the weight across all of the actuals, axles appropriately.

1 (27m 18s):
It may look better, but you may not have actually distributed the weight properly. So if you are going to install an airbag on your truck, what I am telling you to do is to go talk to a technician and have a conversation about why you're doing that. There are instances where installing airbags into your truck might be an appropriate solution. There are also instances where it might not be, you are not really going to know if you've properly, if if you've put airbags in on your own, just hey, I did it in the driveway with a buddy or I went to the mechanic And I said put in airbags, the mechanic's not gonna ask you why you're putting in airbags. He's just gonna put the airbags in. So you need to have a a, a conversation with a, a proper RV technician about why you're doing this to achieve the aim.

1 (28m 0s):
You're not going to know if you did it right until you've talked with that person and you don't truly know if you've distributed the weight right unless you've gone across a scale and that gives you a printout of like this axle has this many pounds and that axle has that many pounds. So I, I'm not saying it's not the thing to do, I'm just saying just be very cautious and get your information from a professional doc doctor googling it on Instagram and YouTube and Facebook.

0 (28m 24s):
Maybe that's probably a good segue into talking about the distribution of weight and like tongue weight particularly. So I mean if you have an overloaded tongue weight that still exists even if you've put airbags in. So like your trailer has a rating, your truck has a rating. So let's talk about a little bit about like the basic loading principles of like front and back,

1 (28m 44s):
Right? So there are things that you can control, right? You can control where you put some of these heavier items in your, your trailer. There's a rule called the 60 40 rule. 60% of your weight should be in front of the trailer's axles 40% behind it. How do you control that? Well if you have something heavier like say a cooler and you've got stuff inside the cooler, then put the cooler on the front of the trailer. If you, and I'll tell you a true story, I actually traveled with somebody and they're like, oh yeah, we put all the, the coolers at the back to level out the trailer. He, he would putting five cases of beer in the back of his trailer to level out the truck. And I, I now know that that was the incorrect thing to do.

1 (29m 24s):
So if you have heavier things, put them as much as you can at the front of the trailer if you're going to have bikes, my recommendation would be to put bikes on the front of the trailer above the propane tanks. So I think I've talked about this before, I prefer to have my bikes over top of the propane tanks for the simple reason that I can see them, right? I know that they're still there, right? But we do know some people put them on the very back. I would argue bikes should probably go at the front. If you're picking up firewood, it should go near the front. All of those heavy things should go near the front. Anything lighter should go near the back. What I will caution you is the design of your trailer is going to subconsciously force you into certain decisions. So we have a bunkhouse model with one door at the front of the trailer for us to load heavy stuff into the back of the trailer.

1 (30m 7s):
We have to physically open up the trailer, put out the slide out, walk all the way to the back and drop something really heavy. Molina And I are not that enthusiastic about carrying heavy stuff far. So we intuitively rude, we are in, we, we intuitively tend to just put heavy stuff at the front of the trailer anyways. If we pick up groceries, firewood, all that kind of stuff, maybe the odd extra bike has to go in, it goes in at the front of the trailer. So we're adhering to the 60 40 rule is what I'm trying to say. If you have I

0 (30m 36s):
Saying where all fat and lazy, apparently

1 (30m 40s):
I'll pay for this one later if you have a trailer, however that has a door at the back, you know, so you can access the washroom from the outside that's actually making it easier for you to put that heavy cooler at the back of the trailer without even realizing what you just did. If you are traveling with e-bikes and they have bigger batteries and you put them on the back of your trailer because that's where you can get to them, I'd be very cautious about doing that. I'm not saying don't do it, I'm not saying it's necessarily wrong. Just

0 (31m 7s):
Beware of the distribution is what

1 (31m 8s):
We're saying. Be aware of what you did and go back to the last segment where we talked about is your hitch setup, have you gone over scales? Have you got things balanced out? Right?

0 (31m 16s):
Right. And to that, I also will say if you, if you're foregoing putting stuff in the trailer at all and just throwing it in the bed of the truck, you also need to make that consideration as well because you have to think about the gross vehicle weight. You have to think about like the weight of the passengers who are gonna be in the truck. Like there's, there's a lot of considerations to make sure you're getting it right.

1 (31m 33s):
Right? And this is a complicated subject, which I think we're just trying to make people give them enough information to have an educated conversation. So your truck has a payload capacity. In many cases you will exceed your payload capacity before you exceed your towing capacity and the same vehicle can tow a trailer and it might be the wrong vehicle for two different families because the part we haven't talked about yet is you bring your kids and you bring the dog and maybe you bring some guests with you. That adds weight to the whole equation of everything that we're talking about as well. And that's why, you know, if a husband and wife travel in a truck and they're properly loaded and it's within the capacity of the vehicle trailer combo, it might work for them but it might not work for a family that's got three kids and a dog because the kids weigh 150 pounds each if they're teenagers and the dog's a Labrador retriever and he weighs 40 pounds and now you've just added a whole ton of weight to things.

1 (32m 27s):
Molina makes another good point. When you put the heavier stuff in your truck, you're transferring that weight directly onto the truck. When it goes into the trailer, as long as you haven't overloaded the trailer, you're only transferring 10 to 15% of the tongue weight onto the truck. So you know, if you put 50 pounds of firewood, I actually think that's a lot of firewood. But if you have 50 pounds in the in the trailer, it only translates into say five pounds or 10 pounds onto the truck. So these are where you, what I'm trying to say is like have enough information to have an educated conversation with a professional before you do all of these things.

0 (33m 5s):
Okay. And I will add one more thing as we transition, 'cause the next thing we're actually gonna talk about is trailer sway. So if you're trailer swaying, a lot of these same principles we've just discussed matter. But what I would say this is like don't trust what the brochure says your trailer is from like a gross vehicle weight rating because your dealer might have added extra accessories that also add weight. So make sure you know the accurate weight of your trailer when you purchased it. Right?

1 (33m 27s):
And we got this advice when we actually first picked up our trailer when we got our whole walk around is the guys like, there's a sticker on the side of the trailer and it says this trailer weighs 700 pounds. He goes, that's seven or 700, this trailer weighs 7,000 pounds. He's like understand that they did not count for the bigger propane tanks, they did not account for the power awning. So the manufacturer is always going to give you a number with fine print that makes it look really appealing, right? Understand that dealer added accessories make a difference. So the weight might actually be a little bit more and probably is if your dealer's added on a couple extra, he's gone from 20 pound tanks to 30 pound tanks for example. You probably want to make sure that you are balancing out the load on your trailer as well.

1 (34m 11s):
Left to right. So we've talked about 60% forward, 40% back. But think about like how do I kind of center that

0 (34m 18s):
Load? And I'll give a great example of that. So we have from time to time we have like a six foot table, the fold foldable plastic table that we bring. Sometimes we bring it, sometimes we don't. But if the kids are around and we, you know, we're gonna have a big spread and a big buffet, like we will bring that table to just lay out food on, you know, whatever. Just so we've got the, the picnic table free to sit at. I tend to put that table, put it in the trailer, but I put it in the middle of our bed because it's pretty heavy, right? And if it's right in the middle, I'm not adding from side to side because I know we already have, you know, some lawn chairs and things that we throw in and if we had everything kind of on the right side, it's gonna, the, the trailer's going to kind of favor or the weight is gonna favor that one side of the trailer. So I think that side to side is something people don't think about often.

1 (34m 57s):
And the other part, And I want, maybe this is a good one for people that are new to RVing, is I don't want you to overthink the problem too much. If your trailer was designed and the fridge is on one side of the trailer or the fridge is the kitchen's at the back or the front put things where they were designed to go. So food was designed to be cold and kept in the fridge, put your food in the fridge. But when you come into the trailer and you've got a couple of bags of, you know, souvenirs and a basket of laundry and maybe some dried groceries and a couple bigger things, put them on the couch opposite the fridge and you will start to balance things out left to right. Yeah, that's how you can control this very simply.

0 (35m 32s):
Obviously how this relates to sway is that left to right loading? I would they say there's other reasons your trailer could sway not having, you know, a weight control or wait distribution hitch would be one of them or a sway control system. But that's when you would wanna look at things like your axle, you know, what is the tire pressure in your tires? Is there a difference from left to right? But mostly speaking, your trailer is designed not to break if you're loading it properly and using it like there is some longevity built into these trailers. So most of what we're saying, I guess at the end of the day is weight is going to be your number one culprit in almost all of these situations. And that is something that you can very easily control as a trailer owner. So I guess to wrap up, I would say you should not have tire rub.

0 (36m 13s):
Your tires should not be rubbing the underbelly of your trailer unless you have some sort of specialized use case where you're in the woods and you're boondocking off grid. The solution to that probably isn't raising your suspension unless there's something legitimately wrong with your suspension. Your tires shouldn't be blowing consistently, your trailer shouldn't be swaying while you're driving down the road within, you know, outside of reasonable limits. But again, I think I would just highlight these things aren't normal. So if they aren't normal, what is the root cause? If you go back to weight and distribution of weight as your first root cause I think you will find that you will probably solve the problem before you end up with a really expensive repair and it'll probably solve your situation for $0

1 (36m 54s):
And you may not ever have a situation because you took care of these things. Yeah, my challenge to everybody as we wrap up this podcast is I challenge you to go into your trailer and separately find 20 pounds of stuff that you can take out because if nothing less an uncluttered trailer will make your whole experience a lot more enjoyable. It's less packing up, it's less cleaning, it's less setup time, it just makes you feel better. We all feel a little bit better when we declutter. And I think if you declutter for many of the listeners, that's actually all they need to do. Get on the right side of this weight conversation.

0 (37m 29s):
Well said. That was a really long episode, but hopefully that is helpful to you. Maybe reach out and let us know on social media. You can find us on TikTok and Instagram as RV Connect. We are on Facebook as the real RV Connects podcast and of course our YouTube channel. Please send us an email. We love getting them hello@rvconnects.com and reach out and let us know what is the heaviest item that you take with you on a regular basis. And maybe I would add a second question to that is one, what is like that one thing that you refuse to leave behind always?

1 (37m 58s):
Oh, I'd be really interested in that actually. Yeah.

0 (38m 0s):
Alright. Thanks Dan. Thank

1 (38m 2s):
You Molina,

0 (38m 2s):
And thank you. We'll see you all in a few weeks.

1 (38m 5s):
Bye-bye bye. Have a great summer.