Quote:
Originally Posted by stratos175
I do have a question about tongue weight, exactly what is it? Is that anything in front of the front axle? Or is it just weight on the front part of the trailer and the how far back would you calculate that?
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Neither.
The tongue weight is whatever is carried by the tongue, rather than the axle. How much of the weight is carried by the tongue is determined by where the weight of the trailer is centered (the balance point), and the relative locations of the axle and the coupler (of course the coupler is at the end of the tongue). So if two trailers are identical other than axle position and have identical loads in them, the one which has the axle located further back will have more tongue weight than the other. In one extreme, the axle is at the very back so if the weight of the trailer is centred at the middle of the trailer, the tongue carries half the weight - that's a semi-trailer. At the other extreme, if the axle is in the middle of the same trailer, it has zero tongue weight. The axle is normally moderately behind the middle of the trailer body, but the important thing for tongue weight is that it is moderately behind centre of the trailer's weight distribution.
So every part of the trailer and everything in the trailer (even behind the axle) affects the tongue weight. If stuff is ahead of the axle, then the further forward it is, the more it adds to the tongue and less to the axle; if stuff is behind the axle, then the further back it is the more it lifts the tongue (reduces tongue weight) and adds to the axle.
You can stack huge amounts of stuff on the tongue and still not have high tongue weight if you also stack huge amounts of stuff on the back bumper, since tongue weight is all about the average location of the masses (stuff)... but please don't do that, because having more mass out at the ends makes the trailer less stable.