The Best Weight Distribution Hitches: 5 Picks Compared for Travel Trailers

The TruTrack 2P is the pick most travel trailer owners should look at first, because it removes the part of the job people get wrong. On a normal chain style kit, the sway control is a separate friction bar you bolt to a ball on the A-frame. It has to be tightened by hand, loosened in the rain, and taken off before you back down a wet ramp. Here the sway control lives in the two brackets that hold the spring bars. Set it once and it works every time you hook up.

Two friction points instead of one also changes how the trailer behaves. A single bar resists movement on one side of the tongue. Two brackets push back on both sides, so the correction feels even rather than one sided when a semi goes past.

The fixed bracket design is the other reason to like it. Chains stretch a little, hooks wear, and it is easy to hook the wrong link and end up with less distribution than you had last trip. Fixed brackets hold the bars at a set position, so the setup you dialled in stays dialled in. The head tilt adjustment helps here too, since you change the bar angle at the head instead of adding washers behind it.

Two things to check before you buy. CURT sells this in an 8k to 10k size and lists a 10000 lb trailer rating, but the Amazon page does not give a tongue weight range, and tongue weight is the number that actually has to match your loaded trailer. Look it up on the CURT label or the manual first. The listing also stays quiet on whether a shank and ball are included, so confirm that with the seller rather than assuming.

At around 400 dollars it sits in the middle of this group. That is fair for a hitch that folds sway control into the price instead of selling it as an accessory.

The Fastway Connect is the honest budget answer. It is a head, two round spring bar arms and a pair of hardened steel chains that hook to brackets on your trailer frame. That is the design weight distribution hitches have used for decades, and it works because the physics does not care how the bars are held.

What you get for the money is the full towing benefit of distribution. Tongue weight gets levered off the rear axle and spread to the front axle and the trailer axles. Steering weight comes back, the headlights point at the road again, and braking gets more even. Fastway rates it at 1000 lb maximum tongue weight and 10000 lb maximum trailer weight, which covers a lot of mid size campers and utility trailers.

The chain setup is easy to learn. Each link is a step, so you can find your setting by counting links and write it on a piece of tape inside the trailer door. It is also the weak spot. Chains stretch, hooks wear a groove, and if you hook a different link on each side you get uneven distribution without any warning light to tell you.

The bigger gap is sway. There is no friction bar, no cam system and no integrated brackets, so this kit levels the load and stops there. A tall trailer, a windy interstate or a truck passing at 70 mph will still move you around. If that describes your route, the CURT 17601 or the Camco TR3 are worth the extra money.

Buy it if your trailer already tows straight and the only problem is a squatting truck. That is a real and common situation, and this is the least you can spend to fix it properly.

The CURT 17063 is the pick for people at the heavy end of bumper pull towing. CURT publishes the range plainly, 10000 to 14000 lb gross trailer weight and 1000 to 1400 lb tongue weight, and adds the line that matters most on any hitch page. The system is limited by its lowest rated component. Your receiver, your ball mount, your ball and your truck all get a vote, and the smallest number wins.

Round forged steel bars are the older design and they still do the job well. They flex along their length, they are cheap to make strong, and CURT hangs them from a fabricated head with grease zerks built in. That last detail is worth understanding. The zerks are there because round bar sockets wear if they run dry. Grease has to be pushed in for them to work, and a hitch that squeaks on every turn is almost always a hitch nobody has greased.

The trade against a trunnion setup is clearance. Round bars mount below the head and hang lower, so a steep gas station entrance or a campground dip is more likely to touch them. If you tow somewhere with sharp driveway angles, the CURT 17422 trunnion bars give you more room.

Sway control here is the add on kind. The 17200 friction bar bolts between the hitch head and a ball on your trailer A-frame. It works, it is cheap to replace, and it has to come off before you back up on a slick surface or make a very tight turn.

Match this hitch to a trailer that really carries that much tongue weight. Bars rated for 1400 lb under a 600 lb tongue will not bend enough to distribute anything and will beat you up on rough pavement.

Trunnion bars are the reason to pick the 17422. On a round bar hitch the spring bars hang from sockets underneath the head. On a trunnion hitch they slide into square openings in the head itself and sit higher and tighter to the vehicle. You get more ground clearance at the same rating, which matters at gas station aprons, ferry ramps and any campground road with a dip in it.

CURT uses short bars here, 28-3/8 inches of forged steel. Short bars are stiffer for a given rating, so the hitch reacts faster and the ride is firmer. On a heavy trailer that is a fair trade. On a light one it is not, and you would feel every expansion joint.

The 15000 lb trailer rating is the highest in this comparison, and the sway control kit 17200 is included and bolts to tabs that are already part of the head. Nothing has to be welded or drilled. The friction bar works the same way it does on the 17063, which means it is simple, cheap to replace, and needs unhooking before tight backing on a slippery surface.

The gap on this listing is tongue weight. CURT sells it as the 15k capacity kit and never states the tongue weight range on the Amazon page. That is the number your loaded trailer actually produces, and buying a hitch on trailer weight alone is how people end up with bars far too stiff for their tongue. Get the tongue weight range from CURT before you order, and weigh your loaded tongue rather than reading the trailer’s dry sticker.

Availability was thin when we checked, with only a few units in stock. If you need a hitch for a trip next week, that is worth knowing before you click.

The Eaz-Lift TR3 is the one you buy when the hitch is something you use every other weekend. Two features earn the price. The first is sway control you can switch off. Friction based sway control fights you when you reverse, turn hard into a site or cross a wet boat ramp, so on the CURT kits here the answer is to get out and unbolt the bar. On the TR3 a clamp adjustment turns the sway force down and back up again, which is a small thing that gets old fast when you skip it.

The second is noise. Camco built the TR3 to keep parts from grinding directly on each other, and the difference shows up as no clunk over expansion joints and no creak in slow turns. Anyone who has towed with dry chain hooks knows that sound.

Setup is the friendlier part of the design. Straight roll tapered forged spring bars fit both top mount and bottom mount coupler style trailers, and the hookup brackets slide about 5 inches along the frame. That range exists so the brackets can sit clear of a battery box or a gas tank instead of forcing you to relocate anything.

Read the rating carefully before you order. The bullet points quote a 1500 lb maximum tongue weight and a 15000 lb maximum trailer weight, but the product title and the size option both say a 1200 lb kit. Those are not the same hitch. Ask the seller which spring bar rating ships in the box, and match it to your weighed loaded tongue weight, not to the biggest number on the page.

At about 554 dollars it is the most expensive pick here, and that is only worth it if you tow often enough to feel the difference.