My First TimeThe first thing I ever towed was a single-axle trailer my friend Joe built to haul landscaping equipment around. Joe taught me everything about towing-from how a trailer moves behind a truck, to making wide turns, and how to watch out for other drivers who'd do their best to run me off the road. Any shortcomings in my own capabilities aren't because Joe wasn't a good teacher, they're because I wasn't a good student.
Backing UpI avoid it every chance I get. I'd rather loop around the back side of a parking lot, park in the street, or drive off-road to avoid shifting into Reverse. Of course, life doesn't work like that, so I've done my best to avoid short trailers that I can't see until I've jackknifed it into my bumper. And, yup, I'm one of those guys who puts his hands on the bottom of the steering wheel with my thumbs pointing out so I know which way the trailer is going to go.
Wrong Tongue WeightI've made this mistake many times, but I've only done it really badly twice. The first time, I was hauling 6 cubic yards of mulch with a stake bed Dodge dualie and towing a 24-foot trailer. When the rear end starting whipping back and forth at 55 mph, I had no idea what to do, except hold on.
The second time it happened to me, I was in the passenger seat of a truck towing a rented trailer with my Blazer on the back. This time I wasn't driving, but let me tell you, it was just as scary!
Worst Diesel ExperienceWe were towing a race car up to New Hampshire with a naturally aspirated 6.2L GMC1-ton that pulled great-until we hit a grade of any kind, that is. There were some hills that would slow us down to 25 mph. I swore that I'd never tow with a diesel again if it didn't have a turbo!
Longest TowMy Grandma Mary's house in Massachusetts is 1,400 miles north of St. Petersburg, Florida. According to Google Maps, that's just over 23 hours of driving. While that doesn't sound like much, at the time I felt like I was setting a new world record for towing. My brother Patrick, his dog Cody, and I set out on a Wednesday morning in an '86 Ford Bronco towing a speedboat on a single-axle trailer and planned to follow Interstate 95 almost its entire length. It was a grueling drive that included being blown around by passing semi-trucks, eating terrible food, and getting almost no sleep. It didn't help that I got lost and made three laps around Washington D.C. on theI-495 loop at 2 a.m.
Towing Off-RoadDuring a mud tire test back in 2004, I dragged a Toyota pickup on a dual-axle car trailer for miles down a washed-out canyon. I pulled the trailer across three water crossings, over sand dunes, and through the mud and rocks, thanks to low-range, 40-inch tires, and lockers in both axles.
But I'm Still LearningThree years ago, I was towing my Blazer on a borrowed 16-foot trailer across I-70 with our gray Super Duty. I had been driving for hours and the sun was setting as I turned south onto I-15 near Beaver, Utah. I had to stop at the first rest area so I could get a soda to help keep me awake. When I came back to the truck and trailer, I thought I'd check the straps that were holding my Blazer in place. I found one had snapped, but I had a spare and proceeded to replace it.
It took me a few minutes to strap the truck back down, so my girlfriend at the time came back to see what the holdup was. As soon as she saw the trailer, the first words out of her mouth were, "Where'd the wheel go?" Like a dummy, I told her I had the trailer's spare in the bed of the pickup. But she meant the wheel on the trailer. The wheel I had walked by five times while I strapped the Blazer down. The wheel I didn't hear come flying off the trailer somewhere in the last 200 miles and hadn't noticed it left no remains except the axle's spindle!I didn't know what to say. Some pro I was.