Tips To Tow Or Trailer A Boat

If you are passionate about boat and love dragging out your boat to the waters every weekend, you would agree with the fact that the trip from garage to the sea can be challenging at times. With a little preparation and practice, however, that challenge can easily be done away with. There are some essentials that you will need to take care of for making the task smooth and simple. Have a look at the useful tips given below:

Prepare A Checklist : 

Making a proper checklist of all the things that can ruin your experience of towing a boat would help you a lot to avoid them. For example, you might forget to replace the drain plug or fail to strap the vessel properly to the trailer. But if there is a checklist for you to go through before embarking on the journey, it will instantly remind you whatever that you forgot to address, such as tightening the lug nuts on trailer wheels, inflating all tires properly, securing the motor or outdrive, and so on.

Don’t Forget To Turn Wide :

Suppose you have a 4 car hauler and your boat is just as big. Towing with such a wide load is not at all an easy task, and you are bound to forget essentials such as turning wide. But you need to prevent that from happening. Therefore, always remember that turning radius of your hauler is tighter than of your vehicle. Failing to clear that curb can be an open invitation to trouble.

Avoid Over-speeding : 

Before setting out towards the waters, calculate how much time it will take for the vehicle and trailer to stop once you have got them up to speed. You have the physics as well as a lot of extra weight acting against you. So be careful and do not overspeed even if your trailer has got its own pair brakes. It will ensure the safety of your boat, the entire towing equipment, you and other vehicles on the road.

So next time you are preparing to bring out your boat on a hot summer day for relaxing in the waters, make sure you follow the above mentioned guidelines. In addition to that, keep in mind maintaining your hauler trailer is also essential. Otherwise, you would not be able to use it for pulling your boat. The aim is to have fun, without experiencing any problem.

Trailering Tips That Can Help You Save Fuel

In the USA, there are many people who own a trailer and use it either for personal reasons or towing business. Whatever the reason may be, trailering is quite common in the country. Towing a fully loaded 5 or 4 car hauler not an easy job, requires great driving skills as well as regular consideration of several factors. The matter which concerns us here the most the amount of fuel used up in towing trailers. It is quite a significant amount, which is why this blog will focus on towing tips that can be followed to save fuel. Those tips have been described below in detail:

Checking Tire Pressure : 

Low pressure in tires can drag the trailer as well as the tow vehicle, thereby decreasing fuel mileage. It can also be responsible for tire failures caused due to heat. It is therefore, important to ensure that trailer tires have the pressure recommended in the manual. It is better to avoid the pressure rating posted on the tires.

Levelling The Trailer : 

In case someone needs to tow a trailer loaded with a boat, the former should be adjusted properly so that the latter is level on it. Proper leveling would help to reduce resistance from wind and thereby increase fuel economy. It will also ensure that the boat can be loaded and unloaded without much hassle.

Maintaining Tongue Weight : 

The tongue weight of a trailer should around 5-7% of the gross tow package, which includes weight of the load as well as the hauler. This can substantially help in increasing miles per gallon for the rig by decreasing fishtailing and swaying.

Lubricating The Bearings : 

Trailers generally come with protective bearings for keeping the hubs lubed properly. However, these also need to be inspected from time to time for making sure that they contain the required amount of grease. One can easily check the bearing protectors by pressing the piston loaded with spring. The hub will slightly rock back & forth if it has sufficient grease and not compress entirely.

Maintaining Consistent Speed : 

While towing it is important to accelerate steadily and slowly from complete halts. Driving 5mph slower than what has been posted on the speed limit sign can aid significantly in getting the most out of gas. Besides that, it is also one of the commonly followed tips for towing a car trailer safely.

Following the above mentioned tips can greatly help to save on fuel required for towing, irrespective of whether it is done regularly or once in a blue moon.

What Is a Car Hauler Trailer?

A car hauler trailer, also known as a car carrier trailer, auto transport trailer, car-carrying trailer, etc. is a kind of semi-trailer or a trailer designed for transporting passenger vehicles efficiently via truck. 

The car hauler trailers in contemporary times may be enclosed or open. And most of them have built-in ramps for off-loading and loading cars, and power hydraulics, which can raise as well as lower ramps without the use of any other hardware. 

The ones that are enclosed have walls similar to a conventional box trailer. They provide the cars a lot more security and protection at the cost of lower capacity when being shipped. Open trailers, on the other hand, exposes the cars to elements but have greater carrying capacity than the enclosed variety. 

Open trailers have double-decker designs. Both of their decks are subdivided into several loading as well as storage ramps, which can be tilted & lifted independently of one another using hydraulics. The hydraulics allow ramps to be aligned on the slope so that there is no problem in driving the cars up and securing them to ramp floor with chains, wheel straps or toe-down ratchets. The ramp can even be tilted in any direction for optimizing stacking. Rear half of deck can be tilted and lowered by hydraulic means for loading cars on top deck of these double-decker commercial car hauler trailers. Generally, the top deck is loaded first & off-loaded last. This is because of the presence of cars on the lower deck, which makes it merely impossible for lowering the top deck ramp. 

Most of the commercial auto transport trailers are adjoined to the tractor with a fifth wheel coupling and can typically carry 3-9 cars. But the carrying capacity depends a lot on the trailer model and size of the car. The weight capacity is also a factor. The weight capacity is limited by 80,000 lb under US law. So, car carrier trailers cannot carry weight that's more than this while moving on road.  

The commercial car hauler trailers are mainly used for shipping new cars from the manufacturer to the auto dealers. In the United States, shipment of used vehicles is even a big industry. And this service is generally used by people who relocate from one place to the other in the US. These people basically choose to ship their precious cars instead of driving them all the way. People who buy cars on second-hand market, especially online and want it to be delivered at their doorstep also ship their vehicles. 

You can get car hauler trailers for sale at Infinity Trailers.