School me on 5th wheel hitches please

cummins2014 wrote:


I can guarantee you can't drop a fifth wheel on the bed of a truck with the Andersen when you are connected, but you can with a convention hitch. ,and that INCLUDES the B&W.

Related to this, I was reading a Facebook group for Grand Design Owners recently and a post came up where the person could not disengage their camper from the AUH ball. Folks were coming up with all kinds of suggestions, but I told them to just remove the pin from the ball and lift it out of the hitch so they could continue their camping trip and work on it while it was away from the truck and safely supported. Well, they responded by saying (essentially) that they were too scared to try this. Fast forward to the next day, they took it a RV dealership who did exactly what I suggested. But it turns out that it wasn't actually connected. They lowered the camper down onto the hitch with the locking mechanism in the "closed" position. Therefore, the hitch adapter just rested on top of the ball and they couldn't remove it because it had basically wedged itself in place. They made their entire trip to the campground without ever having an actual connection to the hitch!!!!!! This is like the easiest hitch in the world to confirm whether or not you're connected and these people lacked the ability or common sense to do that. I'd have to say this was one of the scariest things I had ever read in terms of towing a fifth wheel.