The first couple of drives, the trailer was a little bit squirrelly at speeds above 55, especially with crosswinds or when a large truck passes us. This isn’t entirely unexpected, and it’s always hard to gauge what’s normal when you’re a 50 foot long, 8 wheel, jointed rig, but the white knuckle moments were common enough to be tiring.
Yesterday we decided to add some ballast towards the front – we are probably a bit tail heavy as we have a motorcycle and a dozen or so cases of wine as far aft as they’ll go. We haven’t been using our fresh water tank since we’ve been hopping from campground to campground where we have ready access to limitless pressurized water, and it seemed like a lot of weight to carry if we weren’t using it: 100+ gallons at 8.34 pounds per gallon. But the tank sits in front of the axles, so it’s a good candidate for ballast, and in any case worth a shot, I could always drain it if needed.
Turns out it made all the difference in the world – we had a much smoother ride today, totally stable at 65 even crossing a windy valley in New Mexico, and hardly responded at all to large passing trucks. Proper weight distribution matters.
Another lesson learned.
