Axle Placement

[Mr. Adventure]

Originally Posted by AstroBruce

I have read this many times in the TM Forums over the years.

"TrailManor provides uniquely easy towing per pound due to the very low wind drag and the very stable ride resulting from axle placement."

I stole that statement from another thread.

Somewhere along the line it was decided that the tongue weight should be between 10% and 15% of the trailer weight. A higher tongue weight usually providing more stability. Axle placement changes tongue weight. Looking at the TM specs, all models have tongue weights between 10% and 15%. Other manufacturers have trailers with tongue weights between 10% and 15%. How does the Trailmanor axle placement make it more stable than an ordinary trailer?

There are huge differences between the TraillManor and full height trailers:

- The axle is located so far back that you just can't unload the tongue. Yes we have heavier tongue weights than we need. But even a very simple light utility trailer loaded with 500# behind the trailer axle on the 5 mile trip home from Home Depot would make you a believer: The tongue needs some load (7-10% is what the Reese people say). If you could figure out how to completely unload the tongue of your TM by distributing weight aft, you would have an uncontrollable monster. But I can't think of a way anybody could ever do that without somehow rigging several hundred pounds behind the back bumper (which of course, no one should ever do). I believe that the trailer is also made more stable by its relatively far aft axle position, but carried too far an abundance of tongue weight would make a trailer want to tip into a curve along a line between the hitch ball and the outside trailer wheel.

- The center of gravity is lower. When it does swing back there, it's not nearly as tippy or as motion-creative as any taller vehicle would be on the same axle with the same fore and aft weight distributions.

- The side area is much less on a TM because it folds both in and down. When you tow a full sized travel trailer, crosswinds and overtaking vehicles on the road are more important participants in your driving experience than you might imagine or prefer.

- The front area is less. When I had a full sized trailer 10 years ago, my full sized Ford van was running flat out one day just trying to maintain 65mph into a Kansas headwind. Eventually that vehicle convinced me that it wasn't worth all the excitement it took to keep it in its own lane at highway speed (it was a 29 foot 4400 pound travel trailer, with all the measurements for the vehicles on the road nominally within their alleged ratings).