Travel Trailer Leveling
Once you finish your day of driving to the campsite and you’re looking forward to a relaxing evening, you probably just want to unhitch your trailer and call it a day. However, simply parking your travel trailer wherever and trying to camp in it may not be as relaxing as you’d like it to be. If you don’t take the time to properly level and balance out your travel trailer, you could find yourself dealing with beds that slant to one side, shower drains that overflow and a generally unstable feeling while you’re inside it.
Lakeside RV Sales is in Anderson, SC. As your local travel trailer dealer, we wanted to help you with the somewhat time-consuming yet essential process of travel trailer leveling. Follow these steps for the easiest and most effective method for leveling everything out so that you can have a great trip from start to finish.
Locate A Good Spot
The first step you’ll take in this process when you arrive at your campsite is to find some level ground. Everything will go much more smoothly if you start with a flat, even patch of ground. This means no gravel or sand that could slide out from under the weight of your vehicles. It also means you’ll want to avoid muddy areas, puddles and rocky or bumpy ground. A concrete pad makes your job easy! The space doesn’t have to be perfect, but the flatter the land you find, the better.
Level From Side To Side
Leave your towing vehicle hitched up to your travel trailer. Use a level to determine how much you have to raise or lower either side of the trailer to get it even. Drive the unit forward and place leveling blocks where the tires will ultimately rest in order to lift everything up. Reverse into position and check the level again. Keep adjusting as necessary until your travel trailer is totally level. This will involve a lot of driving back and forth in small increments, so have patience!
Secure & Disconnect
Once you’ve reached level, you’ll want to secure the travel trailer in place with blocks in front of and behind the tires. Disconnect the towing vehicle and drive it far enough out of the way that it won’t impede the rest of your leveling process.
Level From Front To Back
The next step is to level your travel trailer from front to back. Adjust the hitch with your jack until the bubble on your level is even. Make sure to lock the hitch when you’re done!
Stabilize
Your final step in this process is to make sure your trailer doesn’t move now that you’ve got it exactly where you want it. It would be a shame to have everything destabilize after all that work! Your travel trailer should have stabilizers at each of its four corners, which you’ll use as jacks to lock it in place. Many models come with a particular tool to help you lift and lower them if they aren’t automatic, but you can also use a powertool to help speed things up. Make sure that each jack is pressing firmly into the ground without being shoved in so far it bends or breaks.
You might think that using the jacks to level the entire trailer would be a good shortcut. This isn’t a great idea, though. The jacks aren’t built to adjust weight up and down; they’re only good to hold it in place once it’s stable. Also, leveling in this manner would be very inefficient and more time-consuming because each adjustment will throw off the other jacks. Using the method outlined above will get you where you need to be much more quickly and without hassle.
We hope our guide helps you to take the headache out of the leveling process so that your camping trip goes off without a hitch! Still need the travel trailer? We carry a huge selection of new and used travel trailers for sale at our Anderson, South Carolina, dealership. Lakeside RV Sales proudly serves the cities of Atlanta and Augusta Georgia, as well as Nashville, Tennessee.