Does Extending Tongue of Trailer Affect Tongue Weight Capacity of Trailer Hitch

Published 11/03/2017

Question:

My trailer has a standard 2inch receiver instead of a normal ball coupler on the tongue. This is for compatibility with my articulating hitch max coupler. It is well documented that the use of hitch extenders on the vehicle receiver reduces the vehicles tongue weight capacity because of greater leverage the trailer has on the vehicles receiver. However, I am wondering if the same is true for using a hitch extender to extend my trailer tongue. I think that doing so would actually give the vehicle receiver more leverage on the trailer treating the trailer axle as a fulcrum. The trailers tongue weight would still be applied to the vehicle directly at the vehicles receiver, since we are not moving the coupler away from the body of the trailer, we are basically just extending the tongue.

asked by: Garrett

Helpful Expert Reply:

You are correct, if you were to extend the length of your trailer tongue it would not lower the capacity of the tongue weight of your hitch. If anything the hitch has more leverage over the tongue weight now like you mentioned so the opposite would almost be true. In reality if you were to measure the tongue weight before and after extending the tongue out on a trailer it should be a lower number.

That being said the # HE18 has a 3,500 lb overall capacity and a 350 lb tongue weight capacity.

expert reply by: Jameson C