How to reduce tongue weight on a trailer is a very important question. Many people are unaware that you can change the weight on your trailer tongue without replacing your entire trailer. These tricks are very simple and you can do them all by yourself without needing any professional help.
However, before we get started on different ways in which you can achieve to reduce tongue weight, it is imperative that you know what tongue weight really is. However, don’t worry because the following article is all you need to read to understand everything about tongue weight. I won’t be getting into any technical terms because I know not many of us are interested in reading all that jargon. So, let’s get started.
How to Reduce Tongue Weight on a Trailer?
What is Tongue Weight?
Without getting into gory technical details, why don’t I briefly explain what tongue weight really is? I know it sounds a little funny but it is nowhere near as delicate as its namesake. Tongue weight is basically the weight of the trailer on the latch due to frictional forces. When you attach a giant trailer to a car or a jeep using a hitch ball, it naturally exerts a force on it.
You must be wondering what these frictional forces are and how they act. So, to answer your query, frictional forces are the natural forces that pull the trailer backward such as the air resistance force and the kinetic force. These forces push the trailer backward whereas the vehicle it is connected to pulls it forward. The tongue of the trailer becomes the focal point of these contradictory forces. Hence the name tongue weight.
What Happens If The Tongue Weight Is Too Light?
It is very important to know why it is so important to balance the weight of the trailer. If the weight of your trailer is too light, the trailer will not stay put and will keep swaying in the wind due to all the frictional forces acting upon it. In the worst-case scenario, the trailer will get disconnected from the hitch ball.
What Happens If The Tongue Weight Is Too Heavy?
If the weight of your trailer is too heavy, it becomes impossible to steer around. At high speed, it starts to act as an immovable object. In the worst-case scenario, the trailer can exert enough force to unbalance your front vehicle or cause its brakes to stop functioning, which itself could lead to terrible accidents.
You may also be interested to read about types of trailer hitches
How To Reduce Tongue Weight?
Now, coming back to our original question i.e., What are some of the effective ways in which you can successfully reduce your tongue weight? The following few steps would ensure that you have a safe trip. So, let’s get started!
1. Weight Separation
This might sound a little weird to you but trust me this trick always works. You must be very careful to put approximately sixty percent of your trailer’s weight on the front half of the trailer. For instance, if the weight of your trailer is 1000 pounds then put six hundred pounds of weight in the front half of the trailer.
This will ensure that your trailer is stable enough to stay behind and connected to your vehicle. The rest of your weight should be focused toward the center of the trailer to balance out the weight proportions.
2. Lower the height of the Hitch Ball
This is yet another very useful tip that will definitely help you reduce your trailer tongue weight. By reducing the height of the trailer hitch ball, you are leveling out the weight balance toward the ground. Hence gravity would pull the trailer towards itself with much less force than if it was set at a higher level.
3. Get a String Weight Distribution Hitch
It is also very important to understand that every hitch has a different weight distribution capacity. So it can be said that every hitch has a weight limit. Most of the time, the trailer imbalance happens because the hitch being used to pull the trailer has a lower weight distribution limit.
So, if you have a hitch that has a powerful weight distribution capacity, it will be able to pull a trailer with greater weight without any hitch.
What is an acceptable trailer tongue weight?
The maximum weight that a trailer can haul is about sixty percent of the total weight of the trailer itself. And that too if you put the weight in a proper sequence. For instance, most of the weight should be focused at the back of the trailer so that it could balance out the weight through the trailer. Apart from that, you can also try to focus all the weight toward the center of the trailer to reduce the chances of a possible misbalance.
Final Thoughts
So, this was all from my side. I tried my level best to provide you with all the information that you could possibly need relating to the ways in which you can reduce tongue weight. But before you try to apply any of the tricks I mentioned earlier, make sure that you know precisely what tongue weight really is. Lucky for you, I have provided all the information that you could need, all you have to do is read everything very carefully.
In any case, I must emphasize how important it is to keep the tongue’s weight in check. You may think that it is nothing but believe me, this is a huge problem and if not tackled carefully, it could lead to many problems for you later on.
