What happens if you hook up your trailer to your pickup truck or tow vehicle, and the rear of the pickup truck squats?
This will take weight of the front tires of your pickup truck, which will reduce steering and braking. The start of smooth towing is a level pickup and truck.
How To Fix It If My Truck Squats with Trailer
There are a number of options. Sometimes if your trailer is not level and your truck is squatting in the rear, you can raise the ball mount up a little to try to level it out. However, if it is squatting, it means the tow vehicle can’t handle the tongue weight of the trailer. This should be addressed before safely towing.
Options To Fix
- Add Air Suspension to Your Tow Vehicle or Truck: You can add an Air Ride Suspension kit to your pickup or SUV. Rear air spring suspension kits for your pickup, van or suv allow you to increase your towing capacity and get a smoother ride when towing a trailer. Installing an air suspension gives you more suspension capacity and allows you to level your load. It also allows you to fine-tune your suspension for best ride and load control by adding or reducing air pressure both when you are towing or when you are just everyday driving without a load. They are not as simple to install as load helper leaf springs, similar to install as coil over springs. However they do require an air compressor control system for you to be able to adjust the air pressure with the push of a button or through a mobile app. This options gives you the most control, best ride and best adjustability. The draw back is if an air line is leaking or gets broken under the vehicle, you will have to fix it. This is the best option all-around. If you tow various trailers with different tongue weights, you can easily adjust for it.
- Install Helper Springs on Your Tow Vehicle or Truck: Aftermarket leaf spring and coil over springs can be installed for the rear of the pickup to handle more weight. The drawback of this is your suspension will be more rigid all the time whether you are towing or not. Their are aftermarket leaf springs you can give than install on top of your factory leaf springs, that only engage, when you have a sufficient enough load for them to engage. This option can be nice for giving you increase suspension and load capacity, preventing swag and do not effect your factory ride when you are not towing. Vehicles with coil over springs, installing heavier duty springs with help increase suspension and load capacity, but you will have a stiffer suspension when not towing. Both options don’t allow for any adjustability. If you have leaf springs, the helper spring kits are simply to install, give you more suspension and don’t wreck your factory ride when you are not towing. This option isn’t the best if you tow more than one trailer as there is not much adjustability.
- Install Load Leveling Shocks: Aftermarket air and hydraulic shocks are available. Fairly easy to install. Some options have air bladders and coils integrated. Adjustment can be tricky and time consuming. They do help with ride and load control, but are not the best at leveling the load as much as absorbing it. Shocks control how fast weight is transferred. They are often very expensive and not commonly used for load-leveling.
- Install a Weight-Distribution Hitch on Your Truck & Trailer: Installing a Weight-Distribution Hitch sometimes called a Load Leveling Hitch or an Equalizer Hitch will allow you to level your load and use the trailer frame to put more weight onto the front tires of the vehicle. However if gives you are vehicle rigid ride, can be tricky to install and properly hook up. The other drawbacks are that if can generally be used on one trailer, because there are brackets that need to be installed on the trailer a-frame. This can also be tricking if you have an aluminum trailer because most wd hitches are all steel, so you are attaching steel brackets into an aluminum frame. When hooking up and leveling your load, the load bars can be hard to set and adjust because they are ultimately lifting the rear of your truck and distributing the weight to the front tire. This solution does level your load making the towing better than if you didn’t have a wd hitch, but it does make for a very rigid ride but you do have improved control. This isn’t a great option if you have more than one trailer as you may need to get a WD hitch for each trailer. A solution for the rigid ride, is to install an air ride equalizer for a weight distribution hitch. The air ride equalizer for a wd hitch will give you more adjustability and a much more comfortable ride. However it is an additional expense. Again the drawback if you can only use the wd hitch on 1 trailer and the air equalizer only works with a wd hitch.