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Rob:

Welcome to our podcast. All About the Car, brought to you by Schierl Tire and Service. I'm your host, Rob Hoffman, an auto service specialist with over 44 years of industry experience. With me in the studio today, our regular guest Brian call at 38 year veteran in the automotive industry.

New Speaker:

Hey Rob, thanks for having me ride along today.

Rob:

And Bill Schierl, like guy, who's been driving a long time and has a lot of great questions.

Bill:

Hi, Rob, glad to be part of the drive.

Rob:

All right, today, we're talking about towing and you know, there's a lot of different types of things to tow out there. The common trailers that you'll find in Wisconsin are going to be utility trailers: campers, boats, ATV, snowmobile. All fun stuff, but we're going to be focusing in on the smaller trailers today, such as the backyard utility trailer, maybe a small fishing boat, the smaller set, and you know, towing is a whole different mindset. You really have to think about driving differently when you're towing a trailer, but there's a lot of things to check out ahead of time before you even hook up and start to go. The first question that I would have is, is my vehicle able to tow a utility trailer.

Bill:

So there's a difference. Like my vehicle can't do that.

New Speaker:

Yes. Every vehicle is designed differently to handle certain weight requirements that the trailer is going to add to the vehicle. There's specific,gross vehicle towing weight ratings for vehicles. The best place to find that is in your owner's manual. Some cars you can't tow a trailer at all. Many of your smaller cars can tow up to thousand pounds with the trailer, the material that you're hauling and some vehicles you can get up into many, many tons, like your big cabin cruisers that go out on lake Michigan.

Rob:

So the question comes to mind, the chicken or the egg. Do you look at the trailer and decide, what do I need to tow that trailer? Or do you look at your vehicle and say, what kind of trailer should I get?

Bill:

I think the trailer would come usually after the vehicle. Most people already have the car and they want to move grandma who passed away her, all her furniture, or I want to start, you know, cutting down trees in my backyard or whatever that might be from a utility perspective. And what do I need since I just need to move a bunch of stuff?

Rob:

Absolutely yes, and the match of towing vehicle and trailer are going to be so important here. We do actually have a really good resource on our website @allaboutthecarpodcast.com. So check that out. That'll give you an idea of how to match your tow vehicle with the type of trailer that you're looking to pull. And as Brian referred to the owner's manual will tell you if your vehicle can even pull. Of course, most of your SUV's and some of your C UVS and most pickup trucks can do that.

Bill:

So if my owner's manual then says that I can actually tow something, whatever weight that might be, where do I even start?

Rob:

Well, the best place to start with that question is to go behind your vehicle, look, to see if you actually had a hitch already.

Bill:

So what is a hitch? What am I looking for?

New Speaker:

The hitch is the component that bolts to the vehicle or sometime when they build the vehicle. And have you ever heard of the term receiver?

Bill:

No, not yet.

New Speaker:

Okay. A lot of trailer hitches have a removable receiver. So like Rob said, you may already have the hitch itself already attached to your pickup, your SUV and so on.

Bill:

And that hitch would be that thing that makes a square. Like there'd be an open square below my fender

New Speaker:

Or below the bumper. Yeah. There's, two basic sizes of receivers. There's an inch and a quarter and a two-inch receiver that we see most of the time. Yes, there's bigger ones, but for all practical purposes in our discussion today, we're going to be focusing on the smaller ones.

Bill:

So I may have to go out and purchase a receiver device that I'm going to slide into the hitch that is already attached to my vehicle.

New Speaker:

Correct. And there's going to be some information that you're going to need to actually go out and purchase that receiver. And it's all going to come back to the weight of what you're towing.

Rob:

What your towing and also size of the tongue on the trailer as well, too. When you get out to the point of deciding what size ball you need.

New Speaker:

Correct.

Bill:

So I'm now jumping to the fact of, I have this hitch on my vehicle, or I don't have it. So I may have to go out and go to a car dealership or a, can I install a hitch myself?

New Speaker:

If you're mechanically inclined, there's a lot of times you can install the hitch yourself. You can come down to Schierl Tire and Service and we can match the hitch to the vehicle to what you're towing and make sure that everything is safe for what you're trying to do.

Bill:

All right, we'll assume I have the hitch. I now have gone to some auto parts store and probably bought a receiver. And now you've said, there's this tongue that needs to fit on top of a particular size ball on the receiver?

New Speaker:

The weight capacity of the trailer is dictated by the ball size of the tongue. And we're talking a lot of terminology here, but the ball is the part that the trailer actually attaches to, and there's three basic sizes. There's an inch and seven eigths. There's a two-inch and a two and five sixteens. And those are not interchangeable at all. Unfortunately, I've seen people come in with two inch tongues on their trailer onto an inch and seven, eigths ball. And that is very unsafe. They can actually come separated driving down the road

Bill:

Makes sense that obviously I can't fit something too small, but if the ball is smaller, I can most certainly fit something larger on top of it.

New Speaker:

Unfortunately, we see that.

Rob:

You know, my head is spinning. This is a lot of information, like you said, and a lot of terminology. We do have a great link with some resources on our blogs, refer to that, and they do a really nice job of explaining all these different parts and pieces of a hitch system.

Bill:

Fantastic. That will be very helpful for me.

Rob:

Let's pretend we're all set up and ready to go. You know, that you're going to be hauling that utility trailer. You're going to be picking up all the items out of grandma's house. And you've got a vehicle that's ready to tow. You've got all the right equipment and everything. There are some things to check before you go. We want to make sure that we're looking at the tires specifically on the trailer and the tow vehicle. All of them are going to be important. Many utility trailers come out of the backyard, been sitting there for a few years and that doesn't do the tires a lot of good

Bill:

As we've talked about. I know where to look on my car inside the driver's side door to determine the air pressure for my car tires. Where do I look to determine the air pressure for a utility trailer tire?

Speaker 3:

That's a really good question. Uh, Brian, do you want to take that one?

New Speaker:

No. Typically on a trailer, what you're going to do is put the air pressure to the maximum air pressure that the tire was built to hold. Now, with that, you got to determine the amount of weight that you're going to be putting in the trailer to make sure you don't exceed the capacity of the tires. Along with the weight, that's going to be transferred to the vehicle through the tongue.

Bill:

And that maximum pressure for the tire is on the sidewall of the tire?

New Speaker:

Correct. And very difficult to see you got to get right down there. These old eyes don't see them quite as well as they used to.

Bill:

That's what glasses are for.

Rob:

So unlike setting your air pressure on your vehicle, we're going to have to go kind of against that idea and look at the sidewall of the tire when it comes to a trailer. Is that what I'm hearing?

New Speaker:

There's actually charts out there, but they're not readily available for what the tire is designed to haul at certain air pressures. So the, the rule of thumb is go to the maximum air pressure that the tire is designed to use.

Rob:

Okay. Sounds good. And then of course, once you get that trailer loaded, you're ready to go. Walk around your trailer and look at all the tires and make sure they don't look flat or don't look like they're squatting too much. That would be another indication that you may have too much of a load. You might have to make two trips rather than just one, or you don't have enough air pressure in those tires. The next thing, to check on the trailer that you're towing with are the lug nuts. You want to make sure that they are tight when a vehicle sits around for a period of time, it's not uncommon with temperature changes to have a nut loosen up. You want to make sure your wheels are tight and ready to go. Also, you want to make sure that you have a spare tire for both the trailer and your tow vehicle and a method of removing a tire on the trailer if you happen to get a flat. So that would include a Jack of some sort and a lug wrench that fits those lug nuts. The next important item is to know your trailer, the vehicle, weight, the width. And we talked a little bit about the weight before in regards to towing, but you want to know how big and wide and tall of a, of a unit that you're pulling down the road. And in some cases, some people will put a piece of tape with those markings, right on their Dash so they don't forget. Also, you want to make sure that you have your load secured. That is a legal thing. And obviously another safety point, you want to make sure that if you're using a small utility trailer, a flatbed, whatever the case may be, any load needs to be secured with safety straps.

New Speaker:

A safety tip what's securing your load is stand back and look at the trailer and pretend that it flipped on its side or flipped over is all of the material that you put in there going to stay in there. Is it strapped down well enough that it's not going to fly around and possibly cause damage or an accident for somebody else?

Bill:

And when do I have to have that red flag on something sticking off the back? Like how long does it have to be?

Rob:

Uh, you by law are required to have a red banner or flag if it sticks out four feet or more past the back of the trailer. We have a great resource on our website, on our blog with that information also.

New Speaker:

If You're towing a trailer at night and it sticks out for feet past your trailer, then you're required to have a red light instead of a red flag.

Rob:

Oh, okay. That's probably on that blog as well.

New Speaker:

It is.

Rob:

Next thing you want to do is make sure your current maintenance is up to date on your tow vehicle. Make sure you've got proper oil level, air pressures are good in your vehicle as well. Just a quick recap, before you pull up to that trailer and hook up, make sure you inspect the tow vehicle hitch. So you want to look underneath how long has it been since you actually towed with your vehicle? Make sure that the hitch is solid. Monitor the frame is not loose. Isn't rusted through on the tow vehicle. Make sure the hitch ball is secure and tight and also make sure that the ball size matches the trailer tongue very, very important. The final inspection you want to make are the safety chains.

Bill:

So do I need to have safety chains on every tow vehicle that I have, or you know, like connection to the trailer?

Rob:

Absolutely safety chains is what they're named safety. Absolutely. You want to have those as, as a secure item in case that hitch fails. Also, there is a correct way to hook up your chains. Brian, I know you and I have talked about this in the past. How do you do that?

New Speaker:

What you want to do is you take the chain, that's on the right side of the trailer and hook it to the tow vehicle on the left side of the trailer. And then the opposite, the left side of the trailer to the right side of the vehicle.

Rob:

You're crossing them.

New Speaker:

You're crossing them and it makes an X. So if it would happen to break away from the vehicle, the tongue will then settle down on the trailer, safety chains and prevent it from dragging on the ground.

Rob:

Very good. Very good. I don't, I just learned that recently. So I've been towing wrong all this time with my chains.

Bill:

If my trailer has lights, do I have to have that electrical connection?

Rob:

Yes. You definitely want to be hooked up electrically as well. Having lights, you want to make sure that all of your lights are working correctly. It's a fairly common thing for trailer wiring or lights to not work correctly. You want to make sure before you hook up and go, you have your lights working correctly. That's always a good idea too, that you have your route planned best to plan a route where you don't have to make any stops. So you don't have to worry about backing up or maneuvering through a gas station. So you have enough gas in your vehicle before you start on your trip and final check before you go, make sure your mirrors are adjusted correctly. They might need to be in a different position than normal. So you can see out and past your trailer on both sides. And if your vehicle is equipped with three mirrors, which I believe every vehicle is these days, you've got a left mirror, right? Rear view mirror, and the one on your windshield, make sure they're all in place and in the right direction.

Rob:

Okay. We're, we're hitched. We're hooked up. We're secured, we've got lights, we've got everything we need to make this trip. It's time to start driving. So we want to be safe. Again. I want to come back with the importance of knowing your trailer's height and width. If you got to attach a piece of tape on the dash or a sign, it doesn't hurt to do that. And you're going to be turning corners differently than you would. If you did not have a trailer, what are some of the important thoughts in regards to turning corners and stopping distance Brian?

Brian:

Stopping distance is going to increase significantly. And that's directly based on the amount of weight that you're towing. So you have to increase your stopping distance as well as your distance between the car ahead of you.

Rob:

And turning corners?

Brian:

The trailers that we're talking about here will pretty much follow you around the corner. You get into a different design trailer that totally changes the geometry of going around a corner.

Rob:

So kind of the same along the theory of when you see a, semi-truck trying to make a curve, they have to go really wide. So that trailer, their trailer doesn't hop over the curb.

Brian:

Correct.

Rob:

That idea.

Brian:

Yeah. The geometry is totally different with that versus the trailers that we're talking about here today.

Bill:

And that's stopping distance or that amount of time that you're traveling behind another vehicle. You know, for normal passengers it's the three to five second rule that I see a car pass something. If I can count to three to five seconds, I'm in good distance. What kind of distant time should I be counting out for a trailer?

Brian:

Oh, significantly more than the five seconds. Depending on again, the amount of weight that you're towing. The small utility trailer that's towing a little bit of brush is going to be totally different than a trailer that you're towing another car on top of.

Rob:

Kind of along that same line then too, in my research, I found that it's best to stay in the right lane. So I'm assuming that in a four lane highway situation, you should stay on the right lane. Why would that be?

Brian:

There's a significant amount of blind spots. And if your rear view mirrors your external rear view mirrors, aren't big enough. That's going to give you a lot more blind spots. So it's harder to see somebody coming up on your right than it is to see somebody coming up on your left.

Rob:

And make sure you're very, very aware of the speed limits and speed zones. I mean it doesn't hurt to go a little bit slower than the posted speed limits when you're pulling a trailer. A lot of vehicles these days that are designed to actually pull a trailer are going to have a tow mode. And you'll typically find that button somewhere on your center console or up on your shifter lever. You want to make sure that if you do have a tow mode option that you use tow mode. Maybe not so much in that utility trailer with the brush from the backyard necessarily, but anything with any weight back there at all, it's going to help to save your car, your transmission, and your brakes. Also, life's going to be a little bit different in the hills. So on your inclines and declines, you may not be able to power up the hills like you had gotten used to. So be aware of that. That's where the right lane comes in handy. Also decline. The last thing you want to do is to ride your brakes much. How can you stay at a steady speed when you're going down a steep hill with a trailer without riding your brakes?

Brian:

The tow mode that you spoke about earlier will downshift and use the transmission and the engine to actually slow you down.

Bill:

Is There a way I can do that if I don't have a tow mode?

Brian:

Yes. Manually shifted down into the next lower gear, depending on the type of transmission you have. Most of them are overdrives now. So you would take it down into D or gear three. That's how it would be listed on most shifters.

Rob:

And the next thought on the process is just getting used to driving with this trailer. You want to do some practicing with this first, before your big debut so to say. I mean, you want to make sure that you're going to be safe. You're comfortable in the corners. You're comfortable backing. Backing up skills, that's a whole other conversation. I don't even know how to explain that verbally. Definitely want to do some practicing. Often times it helps to have a spotter, somebody get out of the vehicle and stand behind you. Of course not too close and help to guide you as you're backing. Eventually, you're going to figure out how to turn that steering wheel and backing a trailer. Do you have any tips for us on that one? Brian, that was tough to talk about.

Brian:

Lots of practice.

Rob:

A lot of practice.

Brian:

Big open parking lots and get used to it.

Bill:

With a very patient person.

Brian:

The length of the trailer dramatically affects that. Little small trailers, alot of times are a lot harder cause they turn so sharp when you back up and the long trailers, you've got to plan for what you're going to be doing backing up.

Rob:

A final piece that I thought was really interesting as I was doing my research on this and going back to what we talked about originally with maybe a small fishing boat, as one of the options of pulling a light trailer was to disconnect the wiring so your trailer lights before you back into water. And I had never really even thought of this, but you know, electricity and water really don't match at all. They don't do well together. So disconnecting the trailer, wires from what I researched could save your wiring and your bulbs.

Brian:

Yeah. If there's water that gets up into the socket of the light bulb, it could actually short across. And hopefully the worst thing that happens is it blows the fuse versus actually burning out the wiring.

Rob:

We don't need any more problems do we? We want this to go off without a hitch pardon the pun, But we definitely want this to go well. So, you know, we've covered a lot today in this podcast, we talked about the common trailers that are pulled in Wisconsin. We talked about the fact that it is a different mindset. We have to put our mind in the set of pulling a trailer, pulling something behind us. Talked about the different types of hitches and the pre-checks before we hit the road and also driving for safety.

Bill:

I feel like I could go out and buy a trailer now.

Rob:

That's exactly what we designed this for.

New Speaker:

Glad you could join us today. Ride along with us next time when we talk about air conditioning, where it's all about the car. But listen to previous episodes or find additional resources or send us a message head to all about the car podcast.com