Controlling Sway While Towing Your Travel Trailer

Trailer sway happens when your travel trailer is buffeted by high winds or instability and it begins to drift from left to right even as you drive in a straight line. This can be extremely dangerous, so you need to do what you can to prevent your travel trailer from swaying. Follow these tips to ensure the safety of yourself and those around you.

How to Prevent Sway

It’s always wise to do everything you can to prevent something bad from happening, rather than trying to resolve the issue once it’s already started. As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. There are several things you can do to reduce the risk of experiencing trailer sway, including: 

• Performing a thorough inspection of your travel trailer and towing vehicle before departure to check things like tire pressure and condition and look for signs of damage that need to be addressed.
• Inspecting your hitch carefully right before you leave to make sure it’s secured.
• Keeping your cargo within the weight limits of your towing vehicle, your travel trailer, and your hitch.
• Making sure that you carefully balance cargo evenly between the left and right sides of the trailer. Place about 10% of the weight over the hitch as well.
• Securing your cargo in place so that nothing slides around in transit and unbalances the trailer.
• Installing a friction sway control device that can help reduce the risk of sway.

How to Handle Sway

Unfortunately, even if you do everything exactly right, you may still be on the road and find that your travel trailer starts to shift around behind you. To prevent this, try to keep your vehicle in as straight a line as possible and avoid slamming on the brakes. Instead, slow down as gradually as possible.

If high winds are the cause of your travel trailer beginning to sway, it may be best to simply pull over to a safe place at the next exit and wait out the storm. Trying to continue driving through windy or stormy conditions will only increase the risk of trailer sway and put you in danger.

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