Do I need sway control?

jmtandem wrote:

My rig is well balanced and is pulled by a very capable vehicle. I just encourage you to eat your pride and spend a few dollars on some kind of sway control. Roll your eyes if you want, but I'm home safe.

........and more than likely you would have been just fine without any sway feature. What you encountered was a violent gust of wind from a downdraft. It was not a sway event. Sway occurs when mild occilations begin to occur around the center of the trailer axles and with each occilation it becomes more violent. Failure to counter sway results in an accident as soon the tow vehicle cannot overcome the increasingly violent iterations. Essentially, sway occurs when the trailer is trying to go faster than the tow vehicle and is pushing the rear of the tow vehicle sideways harder with each iteration. Since the hitch is far behind the rear axle of the tow vehicle it tends to push the tow vehicle around adding that leverage distance. The lighter the tow vehicle the more it can get pushed around. That is why fifth wheels don't need sway features, their hitch is over the rear axle so it is much more difficult for the fifth wheel to push around the rear of the truck as it does not have the leverage of three or more feet behind the axle that a trailer hitch has.
But a huge gust of wind can just as easily startle the driver of a fifth wheel as with a travel trailer. It is not about sway.

Sway cannot occur towing up hill as the trailer is dead weight and cannot be trying to go faster and therefore push the tow vehicle around. But, had you hit the gust towing up a hill, you might have incorrectly credited the sway feature for your save. That is also why applying the trailer only brakes often returns a trailer from a sway episode to straight. It now is going slower than the tow vehicle. And why you never want to apply the tow vehicle's brakes during a real sway episode as that will put you into the ditch.

What you experienced was a big push of wind that startled you. Sway will not occur if the tongue of the trailer has 10 percent or more of the total trailer weight. If you feel safer with a sway feature and if you think it kept a gust of wind from keeping you in the ditch then so be it. You were there, we were not. We are happy it ended well for you. But, from everything you have indicated you did not recover from a sway episode nor did your sway feature prevent a sway episode. I live in a very windy place and there is a distinct difference between sway that builds slowly with each more violent iteration and a sudden gust of wind that shakes the trailer and tow vehicle.