Safety chain placement

Muddydogs wrote:

LarryJM wrote:
Also, for the gent that thinks they will always brake ... they are not designed to keep a trailer on its side atrtached to a vehicle. A trailer like that is not going to travel very far and the whole safety system has been compromised since the brakes and emergency braking is non existant and I'm amazed that this gent didn't understand the apples to oranges comparison he was IMO not understanding.Larry

Actually you seem to be the one with an understanding problem as the trailers ended up on their side after breaking away from the truck.

Breakaway cables are not meant to engage the trailer brakes while the trailer is still chained to the truck, if your trailer comes unhitched and the chains are supporting the weight the driver uses the manual override on the trailer brake controller to engage the trailer brakes, the breakaway switch is meant as a last resort when the trailer becomes completely detached from the truck the trailer tires lock up to stop the trailer. Would you want to be going 60 mph down the road, have your trailer come unhitched and have the trailer brakes completely lock up? I wouldn't. This would be a sure way to break your chains. If you actually had your breakaway cable short enough to pull out if the trailer came unhitched and was resting on the safety chains then it would be short enough to be pulled out when taking a hard corner or during backing, that's why the cables are to long to begin with.

Too bad you didn't feel the necessity to read and take the time to understand everything that was in the two links in Barney's post above and I unlike you AFAIK have participated with a consistent view in those and prior discussions on this topic.. One thing I don't think JBarca properly included in his first link was the tension that is normally applied to the safety chains by the braking of the trailer which tends to "LIFT" the tongue. While this might not prevent the tongue from every "hitting" the ground a very important consideration is that crossing the chains creates that "SKID" function that will help preventing the tongue end from catching on something. Finally remember all this will happen in just a few seconds and your speed will quickly be say under 20 or 30 mph.

Larry