Excellent video Vaughn. In the years of towing i have done thats the best quickest make the point video i have seen. No verbal commentary needed.
Paul, i tow a 30ft travel trailer for same reason you bought a trailer.
Let me start by saying, changing from tent to travel trailer has been THE most costly and quarrelsome event in our 20+ year marriage.
So i have a Jeep Commander 5.7l hemi. This is what i started towing with. Its awd all the time.
From its specs, it could just make the grade to tow the trailer, but i was not happy driving it.
It had to have a break controller fitter, we also have a increddible hitch that has both equalization and stabilizing built into it.
But more importantly i forced myself to really get to understand all the issues involved.
Trailer tong weight is only one of them. For that i even shelled out for a trailer tong weight scale. That was after i hauled the trailer back from USA where i purchased it ,all the way to Toronto and getting back with empty trailer had to have new wheel bearings in front.
I then looked into the specs on the trailer. Keep in mind the marketing guys that pitched your trailer. I found many misleading specs related to my trailer. What is important is to know what the axle load capability is and check that the tires are a match. Yeah believe it or not i forced manufacturer to provide 5 new tires on mine.
Then on our first trip my wife now seeing a huge empty trailer had desires to take the "whole house including kitchen sink" (thats just and expression in my culture lol).
So the battle started. I refused point blank to drive unless every item going into the trailer was weighed. Sounds absurd right? Felt that way too.
However, i had taken trailer to the gov weigh scale and established accurate dry weight. Then between knowing max axle load weight i could verify the max gross trailer weight. Subtract dry weight from max gross and boom you have MAX of what you can put in trailer, at this stage never mind where it goes.
Now you need to look to your vehicle. It will have gross vehicle weight but.......there is a spec to this, take your vehicle across a gov weight scale, but first weigh yourself. The gross vehicle weight assumes only the driver weighing iirc 150 lbs. So if you happen to weigh more then when you weigh your vehicle keep this in mind.
If your vehicle is setup to tow, it should also have a spec for max tow weight.
Realize your tongue weight is adding weight to vehicle so has to come out of vehicle gross vehicle weight.
My wife bless her McGyver soul thought that she would merely put what was left over after hitting max trailer weight, into the vehicle.
Not so fast Josephine. Lol
You need to check what you putting in the car. So it don't mean you can "load up the car honey" with passengers and luggage and forget the gross vehicle weight and that extra passenger at the back called trailer tongue weight.
So what Linda was blown away with was just how little our trailer could take despite being 27ft long. Yeah load up a fridge full of food, few cases of water, blankets, pots and pans, buts and pieces and just like airline baggage it all adds up.
Then comes the issue of stabilization and weight equalization.
On rigs like mine this is where you get to have essentially springs between vehicle and trailer that helps equalize the weight between trailer and vehicle. It has the effect of keeping the front wheels down on the road and takes that dip caused by the trailer tongue weight on rear forcing the suspension in rear to take load, and better distributes that load across both trailer and vehicle.
So where did this leave us, well it then resulted in the purchase of a truck.
Yeah right. I am not a happy chappy about it.
But i custom ordered the truck which thanks to Ford makes it possible. Ordered with tow mirrors , rear camera, integrated brake controller and max tow of 12000 lbs. All this for a trailer. For my part i would have sold trailer years ago. Its like a boat. And all the crap associated with it falls on me. Its nothing but a cause of friction.
But at least today i have truck and trailer balanced, it still has not changed the amount the trailer can take, but the truck can now safely take the overflow including passengers.
Just for record, i started towing at around 22, when i put a catamaran on the back of my ford escort. I had three ford escorts as a youngster.
Last one was the front wheel drive version and that gave me same issues you experiencing.
I also found it near impossible to find anyone in my neck of the woods who really understood the whole loading process.
Whats worse is all storage in our trailer is at rear of axles. Under bed and exterior storage at rear along with spare trailer wheel.
Another thing, if you have a trailer that has a hot water tank as well as cold water tank, make sure to empty them before travelling.
Again, in our trailer both those items are behind the axle.
You be surprised to see how much water weighs. Same for grey and black tanks make sure they empty when travelling.
Best of luck, if anything i have said font make sense just ask and i will try my best to expand.
Best collate all your specs together....gross trailer weight, gross axle weight, gross vehicle weight, max tow weight etc. Let us know what you find.
Oh and please check tire pressures before each tow. On both vehicle and trailer inc spares.