You’ve got the toy hauler. Now it’s time to hit the road and find a new riding trail to explore, or to visit an old favorite. No matter where your adventures take you, you’ll be able to stay there for as long as you like and have a comfortable place to sleep every night. But that’s the fun part. Before you can do this, you’ll need to load up your toy hauler with your powersports vehicle. While this won’t necessarily be too difficult, it still might be helpful to learn some useful strategies, so read on to learn more!
Prepare Your Toy Hauler
All RVs, and other vehicles for that matter, need to be checked before a major trip to ensure there isn’t any risk that you’ll break down on the side of the road. And these checks are going to be a lot easier to do before you load your powersports vehicles, especially if you encounter some sort of major issue.
Start with the tires. Check the pressure to ensure it matches the recommended psi levels, which you’ll find in your owner’s manual. You’ll also want to inspect the treads. Any signs of damage may indicate you’ll want to get the tire switched out before the trip, or if you notice excessive wear. If it looks like your tires are wearing unevenly, reevaluate the weight distribution of the cargo on board. If that’s not the issue, then there might be another mechanical problem at play.
Distributing the Weight
When you think about your loading strategy, you’ll want to focus on weight distribution. An unbalanced toy hauler can make for difficult and dangerous driving. You’ll want to distribute your cargo weight evenly from left to right and employ the 60/40 rule from front to back. This means that 60% of the overall weight is in the front half, near the hitch, and the remaining 40% tapers off the back. In addition to this, we also recommend about 10% of the overall weight being directly over the hitch itself, which means a lot of that 60% needs to be as close to the hitch as possible.
Loading
Now it’s time to load the toy hauler. Make sure it’s parked and you chock the wheels so everything remains steady as you’re working. Set up your loading ramp, whether that means simply lowering the back door or attaching the ramp that you like to use. Try to reduce the slope of the ramp as much as possible.
Use a steady combination of your throttle and brake to make your way up the ramp. Slow and steady wins this race, because if you try to rush it, you’ll risk bumping something inside the RV. Once your vehicle is completely inside the garage, turn it off. Leaving a motor running in such a small space is a carbon monoxide risk. All that’s left is to secure the vehicle and you’re ready to roll.
This should help guide your first couple of tries, but we also recommend practicing ahead of time so you’re a pro on the day of the big trip. If you still need the perfect toy hauler, stop by Rebel RV Motorsports in Indio, CA, and we’ll give you the full tour of the models we have available right now. We proudly serve San Bernardino, Hemet, and Anaheim.