Tongue Weight - How To Measure

[Brian B-P]

Truck scales are great for getting all of the axle loads and total trailer weight, as others have described. The even work to get tongue weight, but they are not very good for that. They are typically designed to handle at least one big rig axle - which can be about ten tons - and more tyically designed for a set of up to three of those axles. They are impressively accurate for their capacity, but that means a precision of 10 kg or 20 pounds. That's a tiny fraction of a truck axle load, but a significant fraction of our tongue load... and that's if there is zero accuracy error, just limited precision. To make it even worse, most practical tongue weight measuring techniques combine two or more readings, and individual reading errors can accumulate.

I get axle and total weights at highway truck scales, and calculate tongue weight from them, but only believe the tongue weight I measure at home with a bathroom scale (my tongue weight is within the scale range so I can do that without levers) or with my hydraulic cylinder.