Posted by Keith in Washington [24.41.55.51] on Friday, September 26, 2014 at 16:11:08 :
In Reply to: Re: Hauling car 'cross country. How? posted by gmharris [72.219.148.98] on Friday, September 26, 2014 at 13:25:27 :
I would suggest that a 10K GVW trailer is the minimum for towing a PW. 6500lbs for the truck plus 1500lbs for the trailer puts you at 8K. An 8K trailer would be too light weight. It is never good to run at the max trailer GVW. I personally use a 12K equipment trailer for my PW. I have never had an issue except for a couple of flats. According to the truck scales I run about 8.5k on the axles and an additional 1,000 lbs tongue weight. Yep it is a heavy well built trailer.
The UHaul site says the max load is 5290lbs for their car trailer. Not sufficient for a PW. It also has surge brakes which gives you much less braking control. You can not apply the brakes with out hitting the tow vehicle brakes. There is no ability to use the electric brakes to pull your load straight when it starts to sway. I fall in the camp that the trailer should have better stopping power than the tow vehicle. This will help prevent jack knifing. Surge brakes do not work unless the trailer is pushing against the tow vehicle which increases the chance of jack knifes and means that the trailer has less capable brakes. Also the UHaul trailer is too short for a PW, there is no room to adjust the tongue weight by adjusting the position of the PW. UHaul uses surge brakes to get more business. They do not need to require their customers vehicle to have a brake controller. All they need to do is put it on the hitch, plug it in and hook the chains and send the customer down the road. Much more profitable than turning customers away because they do not have a brake controller.
Can a person get away with the Uhaul trailer? Possibly, but if there is an accident they are screwed and will have the heck sued out of them. Not worth the risk.