Okay to travel with full tanks of water?

I always travel with water aboard, sometimes full, sometimes not. It depends on where I'm going to be traveling and for how long.

I can never see the say I would have full fresh water, full gray water, and full black water. Presumably, as I use the fresh water, the gray & black begin to fill.

I own a lite weight trailer with a CCC of just 1325#. My tanks are F=42, G=40, B=40 gallons. If all 3 were full, I'd be over my GVWR, unless I didn't have any cargo inside the trailer.

The Skyline owners manual is silent about having full black and gray tanks. However, I noticed a caution in the kitchen cabinet of my Koala 21CS against traveling with loaded black and gray tanks. I'm not sure, but it may be due to structual reasons. If so, that's a bad thing. With regard to the fresh water tank, it cautioned to either travel with a full tank, or an empty tank, but never a partially full tank. Don't know what I'll do about that. Sometimes, I just don't need a full 42 gallons of water.

I need to send another email to Skyline asking why they caution against traveling with full black and gray tanks.

myredracer wrote:
This is a general question for anyone with a travel trailer. Should you be able to travel with a full tank of fresh water? What about a full tank of black and grey water at the same time? And what about a 2nd tank full of grey for those that have a galley tank?

I've read about some who have ended up with frame damage and support strap damage from carrying too much water and/or too often. Are trailers built to handle carrying this weight or not?? In our case, after a trip to a scale, we only have 200 lbs left before we reach the GVWR rating of 6800 lbs. We'd be overloaded with just a tank of fresh water. Our total tank capacity is 132 gallons which is 1100 lbs and we'd seriously overload our TT.

I do not see on any RV manufacturer's website a warning about not carrying water in any of the tanks. By virtue of a trailer being supplied with fresh, black and grey tanks, a purchaser of a travel trailer would expect to be able to fill them all up. Should you be able to travel any distance with any one of the tanks full or partially full or do they put them in so you can drive 100 yds to a dump station or get a fill of fresh water somewhere in the campground?

Travel trailers generally seem to be constructed to the limit of weights with little cargo carrying capacity (with empty tanks) left plus frames and related components are sized to the max. load capacity. In some cases, the frames can't even handle just the factory dry weight without having serious problems. It seems to me that trailers are built with dry camping in mind, so why shouldn't you be able to travel with all tanks full without damaging anything? Even *IF* you could travel with all tanks full and be under your GVWR, is it still risky? Or is there even a trailer out there that will allow this?

For those that do travel with one or more full tanks, have you ever inspected your frame or support straps for damage? In other words, do you just *think* you are okay or do you base it on something?

Should a manufacturer be liable if you end up with frame damage from carrying full tanks? But isn't Lippert just going to say it's your fault?

If you really shouldn't, maybe there should be a big bright warning label not to travel with full tanks, or maybe not put them in to start with....