etrailer Campers and Utility Trailers Tongue Weight Scale Review

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etrailer Tongue Weight Scale for Campers and Utility Trailers - 2,000-lb Capacity

630 reviews

Code: e99044

Retail: $212.30

Price:  $197.71

• Tongue Weight Scale
• Analog Scale

• 2000 lbs
• etrailer

Measure your trailer's tongue weight with this easy-to-use scale. Connect the scale to either your trailer's ball coupler or to its 2" jack for a weight reading. Unlike other scales, blocks or wood are not needed for setup.

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Review of the etrailer Campers and Utility Trailers Tongue Weight Scale

Hello neighbors, it's Brad here at Etrailer, and today we're taking a look at the Etrailer Tongue Weight Scale. Towing can be a very rewarding and fun experience, and a lot of that comes down to having confidence while driving. If you're a little nervous while doing it because you're not sure of your load or your trailer or vehicle, it can get a little nerve wracking. And while there's certain things that you can't control, whether it be weather or other drivers, making sure that you have all your equipment set up properly is gonna give you a lot more confidence and make it a lot less stressful when towing. Now something that's overlooked quite often is your tongue weight. Many times people say you need to check your tongue weight to make sure that it's safe, but how do you actually accomplish that Well, with our tongue weight scale, we're gonna show you how to do that and make sure that you're preventing something kind of scary happening, something that you wouldn't notice happening until you're on the highway.

So let's get you safe and towing properly. So what is tongue weight Well plain and simple, that's the weight that the coupler with the trailer loaded up is gonna put on the actual ball mount itself. So your trailer and your vehicle have a tongue weight rating, and you wanna adhere to that. But the problem is how do you figure that out Well, that's pretty hard to do unless you have a scale. Now, ideally you want 10 to 15% of your entire load of the trailer as your tongue weight.

And that's gonna give you that proper balance to make sure that your load's not gonna sway, oscillate or give you problems braking or turning with your vehicle. So the tongue weight rating on a vehicle should be on your hitch. You're gonna wanna check that number, and you're also gonna wanna check the tongue weight rating for the vehicle itself. So check your owner's manual to see what the vehicle's rated at, and we're gonna wanna make sure that we stay below that. So knowing that we need to stay at a certain rating on our vehicle to stay safe, making sure that that trailer isn't overloading it, is really going to keep you nice and safe.

So looking at basic weight distribution, this trailer essentially is on a fulcrum. You have your tires here and your tongue up there. So as I'm back, this will tilt up taking some of that tongue weight off, which seems great, but having less weight on your tongue can be a very scary situation. This back here can cause a trailer to oscillate and sway while driving on the highway. And unfortunately, to bring that back into a straight line while driving can be a very terrifying and extremely dangerous situation.

So as I move to the front, this will obviously put more weight on the tongue itself. This puts a lot of stress and strain on the vehicle when braking or turning, and also is not exactly safe for your braking system. You don't wanna overload that. So having this well set up, this is gonna keep everything nice and balanced. It's not to gonna overdo the vehicle towing, and also it's gonna keep you traveling straight without any hiccups with the trailer. So let's take a look at tongue weight in action. So here we've loaded up four-wheeler on our trailer and let's take a look at the scale and see what it's looking at. Our Sportsman weighs 730 pounds, which most of that is on our tongue weight right now, because we're loaded all the way up on the front of the trailer this puts our tongue weight at about 550 pounds. That is way too much. We can alleviate this by moving the four-wheeler. So let's take a look at that. Now with our load moved back behind the rear axles, this also creates a tongue weight that's not ideal. In fact, there's nearly nothing. So that's gonna cause a lot of issues when driving and this is gonna be swaying all over the highway. So our sweet spot is gonna be 10% of the load loaded up. So with our 730 pounds, 10% of that is gonna be 73. Now each tick on here is 50 pounds, so let's try to get this dialed in by moving the four-wheeler a little bit forward. We're pretty centered up over our axles, so now let's take a look at that tongue weight and see how much has changed. It looks like we're right in about a 100 and that's gonna put us in that sweet spot for our 10 to 15%. Now during this process, you're gonna wanna make sure that your trailer is level and you can take a level and put it on the tongue and see where you're at. And you also wanna make sure that your tires are chocked when putting a load up there. Now that I'm confident that our tongue weight is where it needs to be, I can go ahead and strap this down and know that I'm not gonna have to worry about it swaying or having any braking or handling issues with our tow vehicle. And if this is something that you regularly tow, you can go ahead and make marks on your trailer and know where to pull it every single time to make sure that you're evened out. When measuring your tongue weight, going from the coupler is gonna give you the most accurate reading because that's the furthest point and that's where that weight is really sitting. Now, your jack is only about a foot behind here, so it's also a pretty good way to determine that. So if you've seen other tongue weight scales, you've seen them attached to the jack, and this is great if you're already attached to your truck, and oh, I forgot to weigh, that's no problem. You don't have to unhook, you can simply run it off your jack. Now the great part about the Etrailer is the fact that you can actually swap this over pretty easily to weigh off your jack as well. This is simple, two pins, pull this out. You're gonna see where our coupler mount was, that's simply gonna sit in here. We put our pins back, and then we're also ready to measure it off the jack itself. Right now we're looking at 375 pounds as our tongue weight off the jack. We'll weigh this up, get this out and put our Etrailer weight in place. Now that we have it attached to the jack the best way to make sure that your measurement's proper, you're gonna wanna lower this down until you know it's uncoupled and the vehicle does not support any weight. So with this wobbling around, I think we found our tongue weight. Now as you can see with our tongue weight supported by the jack itself, we're looking at right about the same measurement. For many of our customers I've tested these out by going to CAT Certified Scales and they found that these are extremely accurate within a two to 3% difference, which is pretty spot on and it's gonna get you right where you need to be. A nice added feature to the Etrailer Tongue Weight Scale is gonna be the fact that the gauge is oil filled. And that's gonna make sure that this needle doesn't have any moisture buildup. It's gonna keep it accurate. Now it is normal to have a little bit of this bubble here, so don't worry that it's low and this is going to be protected, but you're also not gonna want to use this in transportation and catch a rock while driving. So make sure you remove this before trailing your vehicle. Another added benefit while checking your tongue weight, is gonna be the ability to check your weight distribution. So with your different settings on weight distribution, sometimes you may wonder which is the best, having the scale here is going to tell us which one's the best. This camper is set up for weight distribution. So we're gonna get that hooked up and see if it's working properly. So now I have my coupler lower down onto the ball and this vehicle is gonna be supporting some of that weight. So we're gonna put the weight distribution in place and see how that affects our scale. Right now you can see we're right at about 300 pounds. So the weight distribution should alter this number by a decent amount. If you're unfamiliar with weight distribution systems, here is one installed and in place. And what this does is it takes the pressure from the ball mount here and transfers that weight to the back axle and that's gonna alleviate some of that weight on the vehicle. So in theory, that should lower the tongue weight. So as you can see, our gauge is reading right at about 250 pounds and that's gonna be great for setting up your weight distribution system to make sure that you can get that proper number within that 10 to 15% range. Now your weight distribution systems generally are adjustable by moving the bracket. So if you wanna fine tune that tongue weight, you have the ability to be able to do that and actually get a reading at what it puts it at. Being able to get a precise rating is gonna be great for having a camper. Many times you have to adjust the weight in the contents of the actual camper to get that tongue weight that you need. You can also put accessories on the front or back. Well, it's hard to gauge that without being able to measure it. So once you have your measurements, you can actually adjust properly to get the exact tongue weight that you're looking for. In summary, having a tongue weight gauge is gonna be a great investment if you plan on towing a camper, a trailer, or really anything with your vehicle. This is gonna keep you safe long-term and the great thing is once you buy it once you're able to use this on just about any other trailer and know that you're gonna be safe. So this is a good way to have insurance and gain confidence when towing anything. Another great thing is it is lightweight, it is aluminum and we have zinc coated steel for our base plate, so it's gonna hold up long-term, and it's also very light so storing it is very simple. And that was a look at the Etrailer Tongue Weight Scale..