How To Hitch A Travel Trailer

While hitching up a travel trailer may seem easy at first glance, it actually takes quite a bit of skill and practice. If you’ve never had to hitch a travel trailer before, or you often struggle to connect your trailer and tow vehicle, we have the perfect article for you! Below, we’ve written up step-by-step instructions, as well as a few handy tips, to help you get the hang of hitching up your travel trailer.

Getting Started

Before you start aligning your vehicle and your travel trailer, you’ll first need to grab your ball mount and carefully place it into your vehicle’s receiver. Once this is done, you’ll want to lock the pin lock to keep your mount in place, before searching for a flat area to start the hitching process. Once you’ve found a good spot, be sure to place wheel chocks behind each of your trailer’s tires to keep them in place as you set up the hitch. 

Align Your Vehicle

Aligning your vehicle with your travel trailer is arguably the most difficult part of the hitching process. Even with a backup camera or helpful guidance from a passenger, this will take a few tries to get right, and we encourage you to take your time. Once your hitch is in range, you’ll want to place your vehicle in park and step out to open the latch on your travel trailer. Using a jack, or your model’s included crank or switch, you’ll need to lift up your travel trailer to place it over your receiver. After this is done, you can once again hop back into your vehicle and reverse a very small amount to better align the receiver and hitch. 

Hitching Your Travel Trailer

Now that the hard part is done, all you need to do is release the coupler latch on your travel trailer’s receiver and carefully lower your rig onto the hitch. If everything seems to be in place, you can close and lock the latch using a pin lock, before completely lowering your trailer onto the hitch. If everything seems to be in order, feel free to remove your wheel chocks (and jack if you used one) and hop back into your vehicle. 

Are you in the market for a travel trailer? Check out the selection at Sun & Fun RVs. Our dealership is based in Tiffin, Iowa, and we also serve those in Iowa City and Davenport.