What You Need To Avoid When Towing For the First Time: Tips for Newbies

About Me
Rainy days and curvy roads

I love living in the country, but the rainy weather and curvy roads are a bad combination for drivers. My kids have both run their cars off the road more than once, as well as having all sorts of roadside car issues. I make sure that the kids always have their phone charged up and with them in the car, and that they always have the numbers of the local towing services with them in case they only have limited phone service and can't get online to search. This blog is all about being a parent of kids that often need a tow!

What You Need To Avoid When Towing For the First Time: Tips for Newbies

28 March 2016
 Categories: , Blog


Towing can be a challenging task, especially if you have just started a towing business and you are the independent tow person. There are some risks involved in towing that can be dangerous, so you need to understand how to manoeuvre through these risks to prevent any associated accidents. Therefore, to help you, here are a few things you may want to avoid when towing a vehicle or any other automotive.

Mismatched Equipment

You want to avoid using the wrong equipment for your towing activities. Towing with mismatched equipment will result in problems along the way. For instance, you may end up damaging your tow truck or the boat or vehicle that you are towing. Therefore, to avoid this mistake, make sure that you know the maximum weight that your vehicle can tow safely. You can simply check your owner's manual for this. When evaluating the weight, keep in mind the towing rig or dolly as well. You don't want to carry a load that has exceeded the weight because this can damage your tow truck or vehicle and increase risks of accidents on the road.

Make sure that your tow bar or trailer is level or parallel to the ground rather than being at an angle. If the bar or trailer is at an angle, sudden braking can lead to jack-knifing and result in injuries.

Speeding

Acceleration and speeding are things you should always keep in mind. When towing any load, your tow truck will be having more mass, which means greater forward force or momentum than usual. For this reason, it will take more energy to get your tow vehicle to start or stop when towing. Speeding can therefore damage your vehicle as well as the trailer. Avoid accelerating downhill because it might be more challenging to control your tow vehicle once you are at the bottom.

Turning Improperly

If you are not careful when navigating corners or bends, your tow vehicle may overturn. Therefore, if you are towing a vehicle or load whose wheelbase is wider than your tow truck's, you need to make wider turns when navigating bends or corners. This is because the wider wheelbase of the vehicle you are towing means that its wheels will be closer to the inside of the curve or bend. Therefore, if you are not careful, the trailer or vehicle can hit things such as signs that are adjacent to the road, causing damages to the axle and tyres of the trailer as well as damage to the trailer itself.