Scary towing..

[Rich]

Driving home on 95 last night.. We see trailer lights ahead weaving back and forth... As we get closer, I can see it's a 5x10 (or 6x12) u-haul double axle trailer. Can't see what's pulling it, or rather, what it's pushing around.

It wasn't very heavily loaded, and for once, was actually sitting level or actually just a bit nose-low.. But, it was hooked to a Jeep Liberty.

It was the tail wagging the dog BIG time. More than once in a 2-3 minute timespan, he couldn't keep it in the lane... I saw the brakelights a few times when it was wagging VERY badly, but fortunately, he let off before it jack-knifed his ass...

Only thing I could figure was that he ran out of room and crammed every last thing in the back of the trailer as is so common when moving, and there wasn't near enough tongue weight. Even on an uphill it was moving around some.. downhills got scary.

We waited until it was only wagging side to side about a foot, dropped the hammer and shot past him. It's times like that I wish phone numbers were printed on people's car. I only hope he didn't take out anyone else when/if he lost it.

I couldn't help but think about the Yota pickup flat-towing the sammy thread...

 

[shawn]

Only thing I could figure was that he ran out of room and crammed every last thing in the back of the trailer as is so common when moving, and there wasn't near enough tongue weight.

Yeah, it really doesn't matter what the hell it was hooked to -- it was just loaded wrong. In all fairness, it's pretty easy to do with those trailers. I've done it myself. When you start loading one up with household stuff, you want to put big pieces of furniture in first (which weigh a lot on their own, but aren't very dense), and then pile all the little boxes of stuff at the back of the trailer, which turn out to be very dense.

A few miles at highway speed, and you should realize WTF is wrong and address the situation. That guy probably just didn't know what he was doing, or understand the source of the problem.

 

[Yay!Gurrr]

I usually pass 1-2 'unloaded' u-haul tailers on evenly spread all down the side of the road with a jack knifed SUV still attached to it pinched on the sholder of the road..

The last trip I passed this 1/2ton van packed to the brim, not an unused square inch of space left, several tarp 'bags' piled on the roof and small rope zig zaged all over the top keeping it all on.. chairs and step ladders all hanging off the small ladder on the door.. This thing was going down the road like a webble wobble with a cool 3 axis gyration going on... Oh ya unreadable paper tag on the back too

 

[Rich]

In all fairness, it's pretty easy to do with those trailers. I've done it myself.

Yup, same thing happened with me, moving Nicole's stuff, except the source of ours was the "everything is packed, except..." syndrome, and we kept cramming crap back there.. it added up!

That's where that "margin of safety" that we keep mentioning comes in.. As you approach the vehicle's limits when everything is OK, you can't have that flat tire, or unbalanced load, or that car cut in front of you, etc...

In my case with the Tacoma towing it, tires at max psi, swaybar, load not that bad, it was enough to pull out of it with some throttle.. In his case.. welll...