East Bound, Again

One of the many art works in Gillette, WY

Back again in South Dakota

For us all the Escapade 2011 festivities and mini-block parties are over and we're eastbound, again.  After weighing the truck and trailer today, we traveled over to Wall, SD for our free glass of ice water.  In reality, it was just a good stopping point.  Preference would be to go on to Interior, SD for the night, but it was another hour driving time and a little out of the way.  We've been to Wall, SD before. Wall is a tourist trap.  The "drug store" is less than 2 blocks away, and we haven't even walked over to take a look.

Surprise of the day was the trailer weight.  We've only been on CAT Scales so far.  On our heaviest trip through the scales, the trailer axles were about 14,340 lbs with a educated guess of 4,200 lbs on the hitch.  Today's weighing by Smart Weight was at each wheel position for truck and trailer.  Instead of loading heavy with lots of water, we loaded as normal with as full of fuel as I could get (84 gals in this case) and one day's worth of freshwater so we could see what the normal traveling (for us) weights were on all wheel positions.  We did this in hopes of determining just how heavy the trailer is on the wheel just below the kitchen and possibly be able to adjust (hopefully lower) air pressure to possibly improve truck & trailer ride.  I had no idea just how light we were in this configuration.

It turns out that my guess of 4,200 lbs on the hitch wasn't far off.  Actual trailer weight today on the hitch is 4,285 lbs.  Weight on the trailer axles was 13,335 lbs; 1,000 lbs less that our heaviest read on a CAT Scale. That's what happens when you dump 80 gals of water out of the gray/black tanks before going over the scales.  Anyway, weight on the wheel under the kitchen: 3,550 lbs.  Weight on the opposite trailer wheel on that axle: 3,575 lbs.  Wait just a doggone minute!  The wheel opposite the kitchen carries more weight?  Yep.  We have an air ride suspension on the trailer.  I once scoffed at a gentleman who told me that the air ride suspension will equalize the weight across the axle.  No more scoffing.  So I got what I wanted.  True weights by each wheel.  Looks like we can drop the air pressure about 15 lbs per tire on the trailer.  Ride isn't bad, now.  So we'll probably let the trailer tire pressure leak down naturally over time.  I did reset the baseline pressures in the trailer TPMS to reflect the lower air pressure requirements.  So we can go into Shenandoah Nat'l park with full water and not overload the trailer.  Oh, and we can still carry 265 lbs of more stuff in the truck!  

You really didn't expect to read stuff like this in a blog, did you?  Sorry, but to take a trailer where every appliance is on the same side of that trailer and find out the weight is spread equal side-to-side is just unbelievable to me.  So thanks, Smart Weight, we really appreciate the info!  David

Takes a lot of stuff to run a big rally