‘That transmission is cooked.’
Every summer, the roads fill up with people who bought a trailer, hitched it to whatever they were driving, and figured their car could haul the tons of weight behind them.
While sometimes it turns out fine, a poorly hitched trailer can cause some serious issues for the people towing it and others on the road.
In a Facebook video with more than 2.2 million views, Cedar Sense (@cedarsense1) films what he spotted at a Love’s gas station while out hauling saunas.
In the video, you can see a big red Ford Explorer towing a full-size RV trailer, with the rear of the vehicle visibly sagging under the weight.
“I think that’s how you load a trailer,” he says, gesturing to his own setup. Then, panning over to the red SUV, “I’m not sure if that’s how you do it.”
“Must have the tow package,” he adds in the caption.
“I bet the camper salesman told them their car would pull it no problem,” a person said.
Several people claimed to have spotted the same rig out on the road. “I seen that mf doing 45 on 80,” a commenter wrote. “I passed that guy on I80,” another claimed.
Others zeroed in on the potential dangers: “No equalizer bars either. You know that was a hazard on the highway.”
“Pulling is easy, stopping is not,” another said. “Meanwhile the transmission,” a third added.
Every vehicle has a towing capacity. According to Kelley Blue Book, that rating is tied to the vehicle’s engine, braking system, frame, and suspension. Push past it, and each of those systems starts struggling simultaneously.
Braking distance increases dramatically because the vehicle is being asked to stop more mass than it was engineered for. The transmission overheats under sustained strain. The rear suspension compresses, which shifts weight off the front wheels and makes steering unpredictable.
Trailer sway is where things get genuinely dangerous. When too much weight sits toward the rear of a trailer, it acts like a pendulum, pushing the back end of the tow vehicle side to side. Once sway starts at highway speed, recovering without a sway control system is extremely difficult, and braking during active sway makes it worse, since the braking force now has to fight both forward motion and lateral oscillation at the same time. The NHTSA has found that vehicles towing trailers are involved in accidents at twice the rate of non-towing vehicles.
According to CURT Manufacturing, here’s what to check before you leave the driveway:
Motor1 reached out to Cedar Sense for comment via email and Facebook direct message. We will update this story if he responds.
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– The Motor1.com Team