How to gauge your trailer's tongue weight on an ongoing basis

[check]

I am looking for a convenient way to measure my tongue weight, while adjusting my BX25 location and spare implement location on my 18' trailer. I have a 2" receiver hitch on my 2014 F150, and a (non-wheeled) trailer jack on the front of the trailer. If you think about the logistics, you would want to have the trailer attached to the truck while loading and/or adjusting the location of your load, but then you would have have to disconnect it and jack it up off the trailer ball in order to weigh the tongue weight. Also, since my trailer is a 7K model, I need a scale that can take at least 700 lbs, so your average bathroom scale is not going to work!

So, my fellow TBNers, any creative ideas that don't cost an arm and a leg would be much appreciated!

Here is the link to the trailer I have:

Bluewater Trailers

 

[LD1]

I personally just eyeball it with any trailer I hook to.

There are some threads if you do a search (other websites also) about using some leverage and bathroom scales. If you put the jack on a lever between a block and the scales, at a 4:1 ratio, you can weight up to 1000# with a 250# bathroom scale.

 

[oosik]

Well - I guess, I would load up the trailer and go to either a DOT weigh station or grain elevator scales. Disconnect and drop the tongue on the scales - using the jack to keep the tongue at hitch level. Move the load on the trailer to obtain the desired tongue weigh. Mark, on the bed of the trailer, the location of each implement/tractor for future positioning reference. I assume you do not know of anybody with a HD scales or you would have used that already.

OR as LD1 suggests, and most of us do, just eyeball it.

 

[tjcarguy]

I have an old hydraulic weight checker used by stock car racers to roughly check the weight at each wheel on race cars . I can pick up the trailer at the tongue till it just clears the ball to give an approximate weight. ---Trevor

DECO Wheel Load Checkers from Speedway Motors, America's Oldest Speed Shop

 

[woodchipper]

The first thing to know, is your hitch capacity. I assume you already know what is your gross combined vehicule weight.
On a flat an level ground, first measure the truck hitch from the ground. Write it on paper.
Then hook up your trailer empty. Measure again. Mount your equipment on the trailer. Measure again. So you now have three readings. If your truck went down about an inch after loading it, it will give you a good indication of where you are at.
You will know better at a weight station. Go empty with the trailer in the first place, then come back loaded. This will tell you the load on every axel.
But to know the exact tongue weight, unhook the trailer at the scale, and only have the tongue weighted (with the trailer still loaded at the weight station). Support it safely to the height it was while hooked up on the truck. Make sure your trailer wheels are well blocked before proceeding.
It's a bit of an exercise, but in my opinion worth it all, as you will have true figures to play with .future loadings. You do not want to exceed your tongue weight rating from your tow hitch.
Good luck and be safe!

 

[oldballs]

My experience over the past 15 years with a 12 foot, 8M, tandem axle trailer is that it hasn't made much of a difference regardless of the load. Sometimes I have evenly loaded 3 tons of gravel. Sometimes I have centered my BX 2660 or my (now) B2620 over the two axles....usually with just the mower and sometimes with the MMM & FEL. I rides nicely using my F250 in all occasions. Maybe it is because the trailer is so short that there isn't that much difference to adjust using the eyeball method like LD1. Or maybe it's that the weight of the small tractors ( about 1,500 lbs) is not that significant anyway when using the eyeball method. :2cents:
On second thought, I did hand shovel the gravel in a mound over the two axles after the quarry dumped it...so as to center the load.... and covered it with a tarp for transit.

 

[LD1]

I have an old hydraulic weight checker used by stock car racers to roughly check the weight at each wheel on race cars . I can pick up the trailer at the tongue till it just clears the ball to give an approximate weight. ---Trevor

DECO Wheel Load Checkers from Speedway Motors, America's Oldest Speed Shop

If you have a hydraulic port-a-power you can do the same thing. I used a little 2" pancake cylinder. Gotta pump the cylinder up and hold it there in a vise or something (so it dont retract when the porta power is unhooked). So with it extended and full of oil, insert a pressure gauge.

A 2" cylinder has a surface area of 3.14 sq in. So every 3.14 pounds will register 1 PSI on the gauge.

Use a 0-100PSI gauge and you have a 314# scale

Or use a 0-10,000PSI gauge and you have a 31400# scale.

Or anything in between. If you have a different size cylinder, just do the math to get the ratio of PSIounds

 

[newbury]

I was pretty particular about my tongue weight when I first started loading my trailer. I try to haul about 830 miles with as few stops as possible so I didn't want to do the load and then have to shift stuff around for balance. I have been carrrying relatively full trailer loads down to Mississippi.
At first I did the bathroom scale/lever method. My method was to measure the trailer unloaded at the ball, measure it at the jack and roughly figure out the difference ratio. I think that it was the weight at the jack was about 90% the weight at the ball. So totally unloaded and level it weighted about 200 ls at the ball and 180 pounds at the jack. After that I weighed it at the jack and did the math.

But I got fed up messing around with the "bathroom scale/lever" trick.

I've got several trailers to "borrow" down in Mississippi and it just made more sense for me to go to etrailer and buy a tongue scale.

If you only pull 1 trailer with 1 tow vehicle and your bed is empty you can probably just measure how much the tow vehicle sags and guesstimate it.

/edit -
And be sure to check your balls!! I normally run a 2 5/16" ball 14K, but it doesn't fit some of the trailers I pulled so I drop down to a 2" 6K ball. But I've seen hitches rated at 10K sporting a 6K ball.

 

[LD1]

Not to change subject, but partly why I like my GN so much. Load placement has a lesser effect on pin weight due to the longer distance to the pin, and GN's can handle more pin weight. So shifting a load fore/aft 6" dont make as much of a pin weight change as it would on a BP.

 

[bcp]

I wonder if a pressure gauge could be fitted to a small hydraulic jack, then calibrated with test weights.

Bruce