Load distribution hitch

Anyone have experience with them? Picked one up last night for free for the flatbed my race truck goes on. Don't know much about them. I see most hitch ratings double when you use them.

What you want to know?

ive got one and know the concept of what and why you use them but i dont know much more than that lol

Dzchey21 said:

Anyone have experience with them? Picked one up last night for free for the flatbed my race truck goes on. Don't know much about them. I see most hitch ratings double when you use them.

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They help keep the tail of your rig from sagging, and bouncing back up, making an uncontrolled ride. They make towing 10 K off your bumper feel like you are pulling 2-3 k.... Great control with them. Seem to help with sway as well. A lot less "tail wagging" at highway speeds.

My best friend has one for their camper, it works great. They pull with a expedition, before it was really sagging but with the hitch it sets level and tows good. They are noisy when turning sharp but thats the only down side i have seen.

The only downside is that you look like a total newb when using them

I absolutely love ours. It has detachable bars on each side. Keeps loads level and from bouncing too much and also keeps the trailer from swaying. Works awesome.

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What's the best way to.set the chains

The way I use to do it with my enclosed race car trailer was to back up to the trailer and lower the trailer onto the ball. Just when it would start to sit on the ball I would put the chains on, there would be some tension on the chain but not much. I would then lower the trailer all the way down. I did it this way so it wasn't a complete pain in the a$$ when I was trying to get tension on the chains.

i love the reese set up we have. we used it on our travel trailer when we had it. 35 foot Coachman, bout 10,000-10,500 pounds. pulled it behind a 1/2 ton yukon xl because i didnt have my truck at that time. made the load sit dead level, the yukon didnt squat at all, and it has built in sway control. definitely a nice set up to have. as for setting the chains and the bars, we hooked the trailer to the truck, then jack the trailer back up so its level or a little above level, so the weight is off the the truck, or else its gonna put a lot of tension on it. once the chains and bars are set then jack it back down.

to unload the chains. reverse order, jack the trailer back up, and undo the load equilizing. because if you just try to undo it the bars will shoot straight down ebcause of all the tension on them. and then you can undo everything else.

this is straight from my dad, he's been towing travel trailers for 30+ years. always using weight distribuition and stuff like that. he said hes heard stories of people trying to unload the bars without taking the weight off the truck and the bars will snap down through there feet.

Thanks for the help guys this guy told me to just lower it and then set the tension but that didn't seam right.

Look forward to trying it at.

They can be very nice when towing heavy bumper loads, even on a one ton or dually truck. I've never used the ones with chains, always the solid bar style, but I bet you could google search for the mfg instructions on setting it up properly. The wrong alignment or angles could cause more harm than good, once it's set up right, you'll never want to tow without one.

It can take a good amount of trial and error in order to get it setup right. My dad's excursion took forever to get dialed in with a big airstream he used to tow.


As far as doing all that work to take the tension off, I've never seen someone do it that way. My old man has been doing it for years and the was we always have was by using a small piece of pipe.

Once the trailer is hooked up and jack is up, put the bars on the hitch, and hook the chain on the lip trailerside. Then with a piece of EMT tubing you just place it on the lip, raise it up and pin it. Same way for both sides, and same way to remove. When the trailer is coming off i simply put the pipe on the lip, take the weight off the pin, lower the bar, and remove it.


The key is def getting it dialed in. I hooked up to the trailer one night and told the old man, "screw your stabilizer chit, throw it on the combo pintle". Made it about 5 miles down the high way before i pulled over and swapped over to the weight distribution.


Makes a huge difference going over bridge abutments, it keeps the truck from bouncing ridiculously and keep it in a straight line.

I'll help you set it up Dustin. I have one on my enclosed since I travel a lot for business. Passing or being passed by semi's doesn't cause the wagging from the wind sheer. High speed travel is a dream and overall handling over poor road conditions are great.

Keeps a lot of the weight towards the front of the truck and allows a balanced distribution. Keep the bars level once we angle the ball to apply the proper transfer to the truck. Use a 18" pipe to load and unload the bars and attache the chain

You can see the bars, truck and trailer level below.

The reason I even started looking was on my black truck with the race truck on a trailer it would squat it a good amount but be level (truck was a 1 ton @ stock height) if the truck was even 2 feet too far forward the front of the truck would get pretty light and start wandering so I would have to re-load.

Then I got this new truck and it tows my Camper great... But I haven't hooked up to my trailer with the truck on it yet, it's already leveled and I was hoping I could avoid putting air bags on. Im ok with a little rear sag but I don't want too much.


Plus I was looking at hitch ratings and technically I should have never towed that load without the proper hitch so I really started looking and a guy I work with had an extra he just gave to me.

Im just glad so many use them with no complaints, there were a couple parts of kansas on the way to worlds that I thought the front and rear of the truck left the ground lol. But it was scary how much that effected side to side movement as well. Looks like I made the correct choice

figured id throw some pictures up.

found online, not my pictures**

this is the set up we have.


has built in sway control, the gold bars bolted to the bottom of the tongue.


my buddies parents have something like this on their travel trailer.


the only difference is with theirs they have an extra bar on one side for sway control.

I know you already have your set up, but i just wanted to put a picture on what i was talking about. we use a pipe to flip the pieces up after hooking the chains to it.

Just an idea but air bags help a ton also. I find them more useful on my 08 than my 04. The newer springs are too soft IMO.

Dustball8504 said:

Just an idea but air bags help a ton also. I find them more useful on my 08 than my 04. The newer springs are too soft IMO.

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I have a set off a 06 in my garage and they won't take much to.fix, but I kinda want to avoid using them if I can.

Dzchey21 said:

I have a set off a 06 in my garage and they won't take much to.fix, but I kinda want to avoid using them if I can.

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Ok, just wondering if you thought of them or not.

Emery19 said:

figured id throw some pictures up.

found online, not my pictures**

this is the set up we have.

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That's the same as mine except mine has metal bars (removeable) that bolt on to the trailer instead of chains. Works awesome.

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