Tongue Weight Rating
Hello, We are buying a trailer for our daughter and son-in-law. They now have a Ford Expedition with 8,900# tow rating. 80% of that is 7,120#, but they should stay below 7,000# loaded (5,500 to 6...
Forum Discussion
brulaz wrote:
On the other hand, European trailers look to have very low tongue weights; the ones I've seen place the axles almost in the middle of the trailer, and WDH's are unheard of over there. Not sure how they engineer their trailers to reduce sway, but they all do seem very close to the ground, maybe that's one approach. I would think they have to be doing something ...
You remind me of something that has been bothering me for a while: what people did here (and still do in Europe) when light trucks were not commonly owned. There is a 1954 movie, The Long Long Trailer starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz about a couple who buy a TT (40 ft they said) and took it on tour. The interiors were obviously taken in a studio, but they had a real trailer for the exterior shots. The TV was a car! In the movie, a dealer sold Desi a dolly that went under the trailer's ball that apparently took the weight off the TV, which clearly had no chance of carrying the trailer.
I suspect that in Europe by providing virtually no tongue weight, they make it possible to tow some sort of RV with those tiny cars. I guess in that case, all the owner has to worry about is the actual ability of the TV to pull the trailer. Ya gotta wonder about stability. Based on watching Top Gear on BBC America, Caravans (as they call TT's there) are very small and TV's move very slowly. I can't begin to imagine how the TV has any serious control of the TT.
