More Americans than ever are heading to destinations towing enormous trailers with today’s lighter, more powerful trucks. That alone is not a problem, but under certain circumstances without the proper safeguards, it can lead to trailer sway.

Trailer sway is an all-too-common situation in which the trailer swings side to side (the tail wags the dog) as the truck attempts to drive in a straight line. Wind can induce it, so can unbalanced loads, but the only way to prevent it from happening is to use a sway controller/equalizer hitch. Undetected, trailer sway can spin a tow vehicle out of control when the front end of the tow rig gets lighter than the tongue of the trailer. There is an ideal balance that you want to achieve and sway and equalizer-type systems help do that for us.

Proactive Control

Strait-Line is not a totally new product, however, much has changed in its design since it was first introduced back in the 1960s. It is in essence a proactive sway controller and is available as a round bar or trunnion bar configuration. With its dual-cam setup, the Strait-Line basically loads and unloads automatically when cornering. It is a pro-active type controller and weight-distribution hitch, and so it’s basically doing its job when you are busy driving.

The Strait-Line we installed used a patented dual cam sway control and a high-performance trunnion style weight-distributing system. The job of the trunnion bars is to shift the trailer weight to the front of the tow vehicle and to the receiver and off the trailer’s tongue.

The trunnion bars from Reese are available in different rates (600 to 1,500 pounds). For our Ford F350 and 7,000-pound toyhauler that would probably see a decent amount of added payload, we went with 1,200-pound rated bars. That might be too little or too much for some trailers and tow rigs, so to be certain, contact your local Reese dealer before you order.

What to Look For

After installation, what you want to see is a level truck and trailer. No dip between the truck and trailer. The key to the installation is having the truck and the trailer parked on a level surface, inline so that proper measurements can be taken.

We have to be honest: When the kit arrived it looked a bit intimidating. But once we had some time to inspect how it worked, we became more confident at hitching and unhitching it.

We got the opportunity to assist in the installation as Steve Eskesen, the technical trainer for Cequent, the manufacturer, walked us through the process using our 22-foot DV-222 toyhauler from Carson Trailer.