Andersen No-Sway Experience
Over all I give the Andersen a thumbs up. Initial install is simple and quick. Its ability to move weight forward on your rig is surprisingly good. It pulls well and handles sway about as well as could be expected.
A couple notes here. I will preface this by saying that I am a class 1 driver with a substantial amount of experience hauling god awful sized loads to places where trucks are not really meant to go, if it has wheels, I have driven or pulled it. Hooking up a pickup truck to a 36 foot long 12 foot high 10000 pound brick shaped sail balanced on a 3 foot fulcrum and heading down the road is not a task for beginners. While many companies make claims about control and elimination of trailer sway, wind is still a killer. Simply put, in my experience, if you are heading into a wind that is between head on and full cross wind, your trailer and in a 5th wheels case, your entire rig is going to move and shove ya around. Sway will happen. How a hitch responds to that is the piece of the puzzle we can talk about.
The Andersen uses the friction liner as a sway control device. And really, I think it performs as well as can be expected. You can feel the trailer move a bit, but then on its return trip, it just seems to settle back in behind the TV. Keep in mind I pulled across hwy 1 in southern Saskatchewan which is in my opinion one of the worst places in Canada for cross winds, I and many truckers I know hate that stretch or road. I had one occasion where I crested a hill caught a gust and the trailer along with the back end of my truck magically moved over half a lane to the passenger side. Soft brakes, kept the truck going straight and a gently squeeze of the trailer brake, no drama, trailer slides back in behind me, and away we go. Notable as well was that outside of the crosswind fun (which every other trailer on the road was fighting with), very little drama was experienced from tractor trailers passing either way.
Back to the hitch. I played around with the hitch set up a few times and found that you can change how your rig feels to you with quite small changes in the tightness of the chains. What I ended up with was a slight nose down angle on the trailer (intentional), maybe 3/16 compression of the bushings, and about a 1.5 inch drop at the back of my truck. Steering axel of the truck ended up with about a 1/16 inch rise, and a loss of about 180kg from without the trailer (I played around at the self-weigh scales to get a handle on how well the chains worked) At the next stop I tightened them up a bit and the front squatted back down a hair more so I am guessing my final set up had me losing about 100 kg off the steering axel. This setup changed a few times over the course of the trip as I played with it to get it dialed in. One thing to remember here, I am pulling a big rear travel trailer. The 325b is a substantial unit, see the 10000 brick comment above, LOL. I was well within GVW on both TV and Trailer and GCVW on the complete Rig, but it is a big combination rolling down the road.
What you will notice with this hitch, (aside from the fact that all that snapping, popping and creaking is absent) is that your truck and trailer feel connected, but not as much as a single unit. The anti-bounce of the Andersen may have something to do with this. As you go over the dips, you will feel the trailer move, but it does not shove you up and down or heaven forbid, sideways after the bump, it just settles back behind you. I think the thing I liked most about the Andersen is that the trailer feels “predictable”. Perhaps it is just the experienced trailer haulers who will really get what I mean here, but the trailer does what you expect it to, but allows you to concentrate on driving your tow vehicle. I will continue to play with the setup to see if I can dial it in even more, but for now I am very happy with the unit and feel great recommending it to others.
A couple notes here. I will preface this by saying that I am a class 1 driver with a substantial amount of experience hauling god awful sized loads to places where trucks are not really meant to go, if it has wheels, I have driven or pulled it. Hooking up a pickup truck to a 36 foot long 12 foot high 10000 pound brick shaped sail balanced on a 3 foot fulcrum and heading down the road is not a task for beginners. While many companies make claims about control and elimination of trailer sway, wind is still a killer. Simply put, in my experience, if you are heading into a wind that is between head on and full cross wind, your trailer and in a 5th wheels case, your entire rig is going to move and shove ya around. Sway will happen. How a hitch responds to that is the piece of the puzzle we can talk about.
The Andersen uses the friction liner as a sway control device. And really, I think it performs as well as can be expected. You can feel the trailer move a bit, but then on its return trip, it just seems to settle back in behind the TV. Keep in mind I pulled across hwy 1 in southern Saskatchewan which is in my opinion one of the worst places in Canada for cross winds, I and many truckers I know hate that stretch or road. I had one occasion where I crested a hill caught a gust and the trailer along with the back end of my truck magically moved over half a lane to the passenger side. Soft brakes, kept the truck going straight and a gently squeeze of the trailer brake, no drama, trailer slides back in behind me, and away we go. Notable as well was that outside of the crosswind fun (which every other trailer on the road was fighting with), very little drama was experienced from tractor trailers passing either way.
Back to the hitch. I played around with the hitch set up a few times and found that you can change how your rig feels to you with quite small changes in the tightness of the chains. What I ended up with was a slight nose down angle on the trailer (intentional), maybe 3/16 compression of the bushings, and about a 1.5 inch drop at the back of my truck. Steering axel of the truck ended up with about a 1/16 inch rise, and a loss of about 180kg from without the trailer (I played around at the self-weigh scales to get a handle on how well the chains worked) At the next stop I tightened them up a bit and the front squatted back down a hair more so I am guessing my final set up had me losing about 100 kg off the steering axel. This setup changed a few times over the course of the trip as I played with it to get it dialed in. One thing to remember here, I am pulling a big rear travel trailer. The 325b is a substantial unit, see the 10000 brick comment above, LOL. I was well within GVW on both TV and Trailer and GCVW on the complete Rig, but it is a big combination rolling down the road.
What you will notice with this hitch, (aside from the fact that all that snapping, popping and creaking is absent) is that your truck and trailer feel connected, but not as much as a single unit. The anti-bounce of the Andersen may have something to do with this. As you go over the dips, you will feel the trailer move, but it does not shove you up and down or heaven forbid, sideways after the bump, it just settles back behind you. I think the thing I liked most about the Andersen is that the trailer feels “predictable”. Perhaps it is just the experienced trailer haulers who will really get what I mean here, but the trailer does what you expect it to, but allows you to concentrate on driving your tow vehicle. I will continue to play with the setup to see if I can dial it in even more, but for now I am very happy with the unit and feel great recommending it to others.
