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RoyBell's avatar
RoyBell
Explorer
Jul 06, 2016

Amazing what people tow with!

Coming home from camping this weekend we hit a bit of a backup on 4 lane highway. All I could see was a semi and a stack of cars next and behind it. Figured it was just someone afraid to pass a big scary semi. I was wrong.

It was a conversion van towing what looked to be a 30' aluminum sided trailer. The trailer was swaying all over the place as he gave it hell to pass the trailer. I pointed it to the gf and said I'll bet he doesn't have any sway control. Sure enough, not only did he have zero sway control, the hitch was too high! The rear of the trailer had to be about 2 feet lower than the tongue! The rear of that poor van was almost off the ground! To make it even better, he had about 6 bikes strapped to the front of the van.

I passed him as quick as possible. Talk about a disaster waiting to happen. I can't imagine how he could even drive that thing with it overloaded and setup so poorly with zero sway controls and cruising along at 60 mph.

I've seen some overloaded trucks/suvs before, but this one take the cake. I saw a jeep liberty towing what looked to be a 23' trailer but at least it was setup correctly and didn't look like it was about to flip over....although I am sure that was overloaded as well.

They should require proof of ownership of a vehicle capable of towing whatever trailer you are trying to register. That would solve a lot of these people going way too small on their rigs. Scary out there.