A Beginner’s Guide to Hitching a Travel Trailer

If you’ve recently purchased your first travel trailer, you may not realize just how difficult hitching up your rig can be. While it will get easier with practice, the first time can be rough, especially if you don’t have any instructions to guide you. Thankfully, we’ve written up the handy article below to ensure your first time hitching your trailer goes off without a hitch!

Tools

Before you hit the road with your new travel trailer, you’ll need to purchase some equipment to ensure you’re able to safely tow your rig. To start, your tow vehicle will need a receiver to support your ball mount, tow chains, sway bars, and wiring harness. If your travel trailer’s receiver doesn't include a hitch or crank to lift your rig, you’ll also need to purchase a jack, to support your RV’s weight. Finally, don’t forget to have a few pin locks installed on your hitch for extra safety, and a set of wheel chocks to keep your rig in place.

How to Hitch a Travel Trailer

Before you try hitching up your trailer, you’ll first need to find a flat area to align your rig and tow vehicle. Once you’ve found the perfect spot, you’ll want to place down your travel trailer’s wheel chocks and insert your hitch into your vehicle’s receiver, before hopping into your car. Once inside, we advise using a camera or a nearby friend to help guide you as you reverse toward your trailer. While it may take a couple of tries, eventually your mount and receiver should be aligned, and close enough to connect.

Connecting your Hitch

To connect your hitch, you’ll need to open your trailer’s coupler latch and begin lowering the rig over the ball mount. If your vehicle and trailer aren’t aligned this will be unsuccessful, and you may need to try aligning the two again. However, if you are successful the first time, your latch should easily lower over the ball mount till it can be closed and locked with a pin lock. Afterward, you can remove your jack and place down your towing accessories, such as sway bars and tow chains, before you take off.

In need of some of the helpful towing accessories or tools we listed above? Then you’ll want to visit our convenient location here in Indio, California! We proudly serve the nearby cities of Palm Desert and Hemet, and offer an impressive inventory of RVs, as well as their various parts and equipment.