Camping season is finally here, which means that countless folks are going to lash campers up to their vehicles and hit the road. An unfortunate number of these towing setups are going to be overloaded, and part of it will be because their owners misunderstood how to pair their tow vehicle with their camper. Here’s how to choose a tow vehicle that can confidently tow your camper and get you to your destination without causing a crash or hurting someone.
My family is full of lifelong RVers. My parents grew up riding in and driving motorhomes we’d now call vintage today. I grew up riding in conversion vans pulling their own classic travel trailers. Now that I’m an adult and my parents are in their elder years, I’m the primary person in my family to call when some hauling needs to be done. My father, a former over-the-road trucker, taught me everything he knew. But I’ve also learned a lot myself over more than two decades.
Something I’ve noticed is that a lot of folks choose tow vehicles based only on tow rating and the base weight of their trailer. Sadly, I have to use my parents as an example here. Our 2007 Thor Adirondack 31BH weighs 6,461 pounds empty. So, whenever my parents shop for a new tow vehicle, they use “6,500 pounds” as their minimum tow rating requirement and then check no other stats.
This is not the way to pick a tow vehicle! In this situation, my parents have ended up with tow vehicles that have high tow ratings, but were still overloaded and overtaxed when towing this trailer, anyway. I’ll explain why.
Towing Capacity Isn’t Everything
The first nugget of advice that you’ll be given by dealerships and RV blogs is that your tow vehicle’s towing capacity needs to be greater than the gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of your trailer. This part is true.
In my experience, there’s a dirty secret to the numbers that some manufacturers quote for base weight. The “empty” in that weight often means a trailer that doesn’t have a single option, isn’t carrying a drop of water, and doesn’t even have propane tanks installed.
Because of this, your trailer actually automatically weighs more than quoted because it’s going to have propane tanks, and it’s going to have some options and other equipment. The base weight is also more of a guideline because the final weight of a completed trailer may be close, but not exactly the stated weight. The only way to know for sure would be to pull your trailer onto a certified scale. Don’t be surprised to find out that your camper weighs hundreds of pounds more than the brochure says.
That’s before you even add anything. Our Adirondack holds 46 gallons of fresh water. Assuming around 8 pounds per gallon, that’s a whopping 368 pounds added to the trailer before you add anything else. But that’s part of why you don’t want to just choose a tow vehicle based on base weight. At minimum, your vehicle’s tow rating should exceed your trailer’s GVWR, or the maximum rated weight of your trailer after gear, water, options, and other bits of kit are added.
This is where some car dealerships and some RV blogs stop talking, and I have a problem with that. Towing capacity is not the end-all of what you need to consider.
Beware The Tongue
One huge factor to consider is the trailer’s tongue weight. Your tow vehicle has axles rated to carry only a certain amount of weight. Your tow vehicle’s trailer hitch receiver and hitch itself also have weight limits that shouldn’t be exceeded.
Let’s return to my family’s 2007 Adirondack. According to the brochure, the trailer has a dry hitch weight of 723 pounds. However, because of all of the factors I noted above, the actual weight of that tongue can actually be far heavier. This can lead to some interesting situations.
My 2006 Volkswagen Touareg V10 TDI was marketed as a towing beast, and for the most part, it is a monster. The SUV has a towing capacity of 7,716 pounds, which is practically monstrous for a two-row SUV of its size. If you go by towing capacity, you’d think the Touareg would have no problem with the Adirondack. The camper has a GVWR of 7,500 pounds, or less than the capacity of the Treg. Perfect, right?
Well, then you take a look at the other specs. The Touareg’s hitch has a maximum tongue weight limit of 716 pounds. Some hitch receivers may quote a higher tongue weight limit with a weight distribution hitch, which we’ll get to in a moment, but the Touareg does not. That means that even though the Treg has a good enough towing capacity, trying to tow the Adirondack with it would be overloading the Touareg.
Payload Matters
I’m not done yet. Your tow vehicle has a payload limit. Everything that you load into your tow vehicle, including gear, people, pets, modifications, roof rack boxes, and anything else it didn’t leave the factory with, subtracts from your payload. Your trailer’s tongue weight does, too.
My Touareg V10 TDI has a payload rating of 1,194 pounds. Just for giggles, let’s say you load up a trailer that has a hitch weight of exactly 716 pounds. You shouldn’t max out your tow vehicle’s capacity, but let’s use it as an example. Zap that from the payload, and that leaves you with just 478 pounds to play with. That’s 478 pounds for you, your family, Rover the dog, and your camping gear. Definitely don’t do what Volkswagen did and put over a dozen tons of ballast in your Touareg before towing a Boeing 747:
This is just another example of how a tow vehicle can have the correct towing capacity for a trailer, but cannot safely tow said trailer, anyway. If you cannot find your vehicle’s payload, you can get a rough number by subtracting your vehicle’s curb weight from GVWR.
Okay, fine. Let’s say that you buy a full-size half-ton American SUV with a big ol’ American V8 engine. That’s what my parents’ 2011 Chevrolet Suburban 1500 was. Great, right? Well, like my wife and lawyer say on a daily basis, “it depends.”
Our Suburban had the 5.3-liter V8 and an 8,000-pound tow rating. As far as my parents were concerned, that’s all they needed. However, I took note that the SUV had a payload rating of just 1,519 pounds. The Adirondack has a base tongue weight of 723 pounds. Now, because of what I mentioned earlier, there’s no chance it actually weighs 723 pounds. The propane tanks and battery add at least 100 pounds on their own. So, let’s say that the tongue weighs 830 pounds.
Attach that trailer to the Suburban and you’re left with 749 pounds to play with. That’s fine, right? It depends. My family is a big one. I weigh 200 pounds, as does my dad. That’s 400 pounds. My mom weighs 150 pounds, which results in 550 pounds. We also travel light, so when it’s just the three of us, we’re within limits. Adding my 130-pound wife doesn’t even take it over.
However, it’s clear that the Suburban wasn’t happy with this arrangement. The 5.3 got a workout just accelerating on flat ground, and the rig required a relatively heavy right foot just to maintain speed. Activate cruise control, and the SUV would lose speed. It also got 7 mpg on flat ground and 5 mpg or less in any other situation. That doesn’t even mention how it handled like I was driving a Texas Roadhouse.
It was an interesting change compared to my parents’ previous tow vehicle, a 2010 Ford Expedition EL. That SUV had a marginally better tow rating of 8,700 pounds and a marginally better payload of 1,570 pounds. It handled better, too, but got a whopping 5 mpg while towing the same trailer on totally flat ground. I just didn’t pay attention to the MPG guess-o-meter when doing anything else.
One way some folks may try to get around payload limitations is by installing an aftermarket suspension or air bags. While this may get your truck level, it’s not actually adding payload because payload numbers involve far more than just what your suspension can handle.
The biggest problem happened when my brother loaded his family into the Suburban. See, my brother’s family has six members in it, and add them all up and you’ll get about 950 pounds. Then they have a dog weighing at least 50 pounds, plus gear for two adults, two big teens, and two kids. They didn’t even come close to meeting the payload of the Suburban. I wasn’t one bit surprised when my brother began reporting that the Suburban struggled so much with his family and the Adirondack that he didn’t feel safe exceeding 60 mph.
My parents have since upgraded their vehicles. Dad now has a 2016 Ford F-350 Super Duty Crew Cab SRW. That truck, which flexes some muscle with a 6.2-liter V8, can tow a 12,500-pound camper and has a 3,000-pound payload. The Ford handles the Adirondack and the family’s newer, heavier 2022 Heartland Mallard M33 like the trailer owes it money, which is great! The truck also has lots of capability to spare, which I also like. It sounds silly, but I’d rather have them get too much truck than too little.
Alright, so we’ve covered GVWRs, towing capacities, hitch weight limits, and payloads. All of those are critical. What else is there?
Staying Within Limits
You’ll also need to be concerned with Gross Combined Weight Rating. This is the rated maximum safe weight of your tow vehicle plus a loaded trailer. Let’s bring that 2011 Suburban back into the picture. It has a GCWR of 14,000 pounds. Some people will subtract their truck’s GCWR from their truck’s GVWR to determine a buffer. Our Suburban had a GVWR of 7,200 pounds. That means towing a trailer of around 6,800 pounds in order to leave some room. Of course, the vehicle can tow the full 8,000 pounds as advertised, and the vehicle’s engineers have gone through a lot of work to prove it can do it safely, but it’s a good idea to have some excess capacity.
You also need to be concerned with axle weights. As I said earlier, your trailer’s tongue is a lot of weight, and under normal conditions, the rear axle is carrying most of that load. A lot of manufacturers recommend the use of a weight distribution hitch above certain weights. The 2011 Suburban’s hitch holds only 600 pounds of tongue weight by itself. GM says that towing a heavier tongue requires the use of a weight distribution hitch.
This nifty device works by using giant spring bar tensioners and links between a special trailer hitch and the trailer’s frame to effectively join your truck frame to your trailer frame. When these bars are tensioned, often through the use of chains, and lever, and pins, the actual tongue weight remains the same, but now the weight is more balanced across the truck and trailer frames instead of weighing down on mostly just the truck’s rear axle.
In essence, you’re sort of lifting the truck’s rear end up. Check this video out:
One thing to remember here is that a “WD” hitch is not a cheat code to tow more weight. My Touareg’s 716-pound tongue limit is a strict one. Adding a WD hitch doesn’t mean I’ll be able to tow the Adirondack safely. A WD hitch also doesn’t mean you can intentionally overload the front of your trailer. Our resident suspension engineer, Huibert Mees, wrote an excellent explainer on proper trailer loading, the physics of tongue weight, and why trailers sway. Click here to read it.
The general rule of thumb is that you want to load your trailer so that 10 percent to 15 percent of the total weight is on the tongue. Some camper designs already have extremely heavy tongues, so keep this in mind when you load your trailer. These illustrations from Huibert show the problem with allowing too much weight to sit on your hitch and thus your rear axle. Here’s a base vehicle:
Now that vehicle with a 3,500-pound trailer with 10 percent of its weight on the tongue:
This is safe in this scenario. Now watch what happens when you put most of the weight on the hitch, either through trailer design or loading:
This is an unsafe configuration, one that overloads the rear axle and unloads the front axle. It can be a disaster waiting to happen. Either way, you need to make sure your vehicle’s axle ratings, which can often be found in your vehicle’s documentation, can actually handle your chosen trailer.
Some tow vehicles have other considerations and stated limits, such as the frontal surface area of the trailer that you’ll be towing. Likewise, you’ll find that many modern vehicles have internal programming to reduce trailer sway. Some of these vehicles will recommend against using an old-school friction-based anti-sway device on your trailer hitch when the vehicle’s anti-sway program is active. These smaller aspects of towing will be revealed by your owner’s manual.
There’s also some just good general guidance out there. A lot of folks won’t choose a trailer that exceeds 80 percent of any stated capacity of a tow vehicle. The belief is that not running at the limit is safer and better for longevity. Others will intentionally buy a vehicle that’s too huge because they expect to buy a bigger trailer at a later date. That’s also fine.
Some trailer and towing equipment manufacturers also recommend following a wheelbase rule to ensure better stability. This advice dictates that 110 inches of wheelbase is good for up to a 20-foot trailer. Every four-inch increase in truck wheelbase from there gets you another foot of trailer length. My family’s Adirondack trailer is 35’5” long, which suggests that we would want a vehicle with around 168 or 170 inches of wheelbase for a safe tow.
Some of these manufacturers don’t consider the wheelbase ratio to be a hard rule. In 2023, I used a Tundra TRD Pro CrewMax short bed truck, which has a 145.7-inch wheelbase, to tow the Adirondack. If you follow the wheelbase ratio rule, the Tundra is good for a 29-foot trailer. However, in my towing experience, the Tundra was a beast with the Adirondack.
I will stress that it won’t be like this in every case. So it’s still a good rule to try to adhere to. This rule is also why it would not be a great idea to tow a long trailer with a Jeep Wrangler or with my Volkswagen Touareg. The towing capacity might be there, but the wheelbase is far too short to tow a long trailer in a stable manner.
One bit of advice out there includes twisting your safety chains a couple of times before latching them onto the tow vehicle to ensure they don’t drag on the ground. Update: This actually appears to be old advice. As a reader pointed out, this can reduce the chain’s strength:
An alternative way to deal with chains that are too long would be to loop them through the anchor point on your vehicle. In my experience, some new RV designs have very thick hooks, so you may have to experiment or have the chain shortened for your vehicle.
You also want to make sure that the emergency braking cable is connected as well. That way, if the worst scenario does happen and something causes your truck to disconnect, your camper doesn’t turn into a stick-built missile on the highway.
Chicken And The Egg
One question many folks have is “Which one do I buy first?” Personally, I would first identify the trailer that you want. Learn its spec sheet and then find a tow vehicle that can safely tow the trailer. As I noted above, a lot of folks choose tow vehicles where no one metric exceeds 80 percent of the tow vehicle’s rated capacity. That’s a good start. I would then test drive that vehicle and see if you’re comfortable with it. If you are, you are good to go!
Some people will buy their dream camper first and then figure out the tow vehicle afterward. While this certainly works, I personally wouldn’t do it. You may find out that the best vehicles for your trailer are ones that you don’t want to drive. If you buy the tow vehicle first, you could choose a different trailer. But if you buy the trailer first, now you’re either trying to sell the trailer or forcing yourself to drive a vehicle you’re not comfortable with.
But I suppose that last part is up to you.
As a bit of housekeeping, I will also note that what I’ve written applies to how towing works in the United States. Europeans follow different standards. Their trailers often have less tongue weight and axles closer to the center of the trailer. European trailers also have a different center of mass that’s closer to that axle. The short version is that Europeans can tow big trailers with tiny cars, but they have to travel slowly and have a lower degree of overall safety. Americans can tow more weight and tow it faster. So, don’t look at the European tow rating for your vehicle and think you’re automatically good to go.
Of course, one of the best things you can do is learn how to tow a trailer the proper way. Thankfully, there are schools online and in real life that can teach you how to safely tow your camper. Towing isn’t just hitching up and driving. You need to be cognizant of increased stopping distances, trailer sway, trailer swing, making wide turns, and more.
Hopefully, this helps. If you somehow missed everything else, just know that towing capacity is not the only metric that matters. At any rate, warm weather is finally here! It’s time to hit the road and create some great memories with your family. Choose the right camper and the right tow vehicle and you’re two steps closer to ensuring fantastic memory creation for years to come.
Good primer and can save you a lot of pain at different points. I’d also suggest that once you do the basics and get your tow vehicle, trailer and WDH set up, take a visit to a CAT scale, because numbers don’t lie and it’s very enlightening to know how much weight you’re really moving to the steer axle.
It’s also much less stressful towing below your limit. I tow a relatively small trailer across the Great Plains every summer and when the wind really decides to blow, even with a truck that’s massive overkill it isn’t exactly fun. There’s no way I would do it with my short wheelbase Jeep I originally got to tow, even though technically the trailer was well within its limits.
Anyway, I really like this article. So many people do what your parents did, buying a camper whose dry weight is just below the tow rating of their vehicle, and have no idea they’re wildly out of spec with that setup.
I’ve been wanting to buy a tow vehicle for a while now, and tongue weight is making a full size truck feel mandatory. I was really hoping to get by with a midsize until I started doing my research.
What are you planning on towing?
Racecars, the one I NEED it for is 3000lbs and my heaviest is around 3600 lbs.
I see soooooo many truck in my area with their back ends dragging the ground because they have way over exceeded the towing capacity of their truck. A lot of the people go by the rule: if the tongue and ball are the same size, we’re towing it.
First paragraph: My parents taught me everything I know about towing!
Second paragraph: Here’s why my parents are completely wrong!
Experience, Something you get, right after you needed it.
In Europe basic rule is never tow heavier than the car. And of course if both the car and the trailer / caravan weigh more than 3.5 tonnes you need a heavy goods license, with an E mention which shows you can reverse a trailer through cones all by your self…
I’m not sure where this comes from. The Touareg/Cayenne that Mercedes references are rated to tow 3500kg; I suspect were it not for the licensing they would be rated even higher. This is far more than those cars weigh. From experience, these cars do fine towing that kind of weight. My 8000# Silverado 3500 is rated to tow almost double its curb weight and does so routinely with no complaint.
Europe generally assumes vehicles towing trailers will be limited to something like 80 kph (some countries are up to 130 kph). They also use a far lower tongue weight, which is why Mercedes’ Touareg tongue rating doesn’t compute with the 10% rule of thumb that she is accustomed to. The lower tongue weight works fine at the lower speeds that one sees in Europe. Check the tow rating of almost any vehicle sold in the USA and Europe and you will see the ratings in Europe to be much higher. For reference, I had an Audi 5000 turbo quattro wagon that was rated to tow 4400# in Europe, but only 2000# in the USA.
Yip, the vehicle can tow that, but if you are stopped and found to be driving more than 3.5 tonnes, car and trailer combined, you are prosecuted for driving without the right license.
The Uk used to have an exception allowing you to drive some 7.5 tonne lorries (trucks) but that went before it left the EU, and as far as I know has not been reinstated.
It is one of the reasons that the giant campers from the states are not often seen — people do not want the bother of going to driving school, then passing the test.
Whatever you do, don’t let the chains drag on the pavement. Some truly horrific wildfires that have obliterated entire towns have been attributed to sparks from dragging chains. Some rubber tarp straps to take the slack out work well.
Some of the camp trailers I see towed by hitches seem like they really should be a gooseneck or fifth wheel setup. Why aren’t those more popular?
For that matter, why do camping trailers have one or two axles at the center of the trailer, but any trailer for a serious load has a steering axle at the front and another axle at the rear and negligible load on the hitch? It seems like a a big trailer balancing on wheels in the center and depending on the tow vehicle’s dynamics is just asking for problems.
My experience towing trailers other than some u-haul stuff has been agricultural in nature, where it is truly horrifying what is legal, and the rule is basically try it and if something breaks, that’s what welders are for.
Also a piece of advice: if you see a pickup at worse yet a tractor pulling an ag trailer, just assume it can’t stop or turn and that there is some three inch solid steel bar extending three feet into your lane that you can’t see.
For that matter, why do camping trailers have one or two axles at the center of the trailer, but any trailer for a serious load has a steering axle at the front and another axle at the rear and negligible load on the hitch? It seems like a a big trailer balancing on wheels in the center and depending on the tow vehicle’s dynamics is just asking for problems.
At any reasonable highway speed, a wagon (fixed rear axle(s), steerable front axle) will be very unsteady, and tend to steer independently of the tow vehicle. For example, you can tow a hay wagon behind a tractor at ‘tractor speeds’ (under 20 MPH), but at even 25 or 30 MPH behind a pickup, that wagon will be all over the road. There are probably ways to dampen this steering effect, but a trailer with the proper amount of weight on the hitch completely eliminates this problem.
The second half of all 18 wheel semi trailer trucks is that configuration, and they get driven at speed with pretty arbitrary weight distribution.
Farm trailers mostly don’t tow well at speed because speed isn’t a design consideration. I would say that backing up and not loading the hitch are given much mor consideration.
One of these for example has really interesting dynamics when there is 6000 pounds of cultivator swinging by chains underneath it.
https://d3j17a2r8lnfte.cloudfront.net/bkr2/2023/3/medium/qhfLvJ7lspgRncnHQvCwHdq4.jpeg
On weight distribution hitches. I’m old enough that when the Toronado was introduced, EZ Lift ran a TV commercial with an Airstream (I think) hooked tot he back of the Toro w/ the WD hitch and the rear wheels removed from the car. Obviously, that was dangerous and would be real exciting in corners, but did demonstrate how much weight could be moved.
I’ve followed the keep it under capacity policy and it has worked out. My 02 F150 has a 157″ wheelbase and an 8000lb tow rating, and a measly 1200lb payload. With only two people and some gear that still stays in limits but a 500lb tongue weight gives a noticeable squat. I actually had a better experience with a 6000lb two axle trailer with a weight distributing hitch than with a 4500lb single axle trailer. Gas mileage was bad, but I could do 60mph comfortably.
Brakes. Many things make a good tow rig. Proper brakes is a big factor. Know when to downshift for some compression braking. Avoid liquid brakes. Replace everything if the brakes do become liquid. Slowing down also helps brakes. Proper trailer brakes assist vehicle service brakes.
“Avoid liquid brakes”
My experience with brakes consists of:
Cable, and/or rod, mechanical brakes.
Hydraulic “juice” brakes
Air brakes.
Where do liquid brakes fit in all this?
Hey Mercedes, idea for a story: Borrow a 2000’s Chevy Suburban 2500, the one with the 8.1L big block and the 12,000 lb tow rating, and tow your family’s RV with it–and see if it does better than a new Suburban! It would be an interesting comparison, as Chevy has never advertised a higher tow rating for the Suburban since that peak in the 2000s.
The 2000s were peak towing for SUVs. Excursions with the 7.3L and 6.0L, Suburbans with the 8.1L. I have been perplexed about the decrease in tow ratings of the full size SUV while the 1/2 ton trucks that they are based on have garnered truly bewildering tow ratings. It is truly an odd world where the unibody Durango will tow more than a Suburban. At least an Expedition can tow up to 9,600#.
The ratings have changed and become standardized since then as well. Used to be each manufacturer just set their own tow rating, now they follow an SAE standard. Also the Wagoneer has a 10k lb towing capacity, same as the excursion, but meets the updated standard. I’d still wager the excursion is more stable while towing, as long as your front end has good ball joints.
I once picked up a load of pallet racking an hour away using my Buick Roadmaster Estate. I had called the supplier to determine the payload weight, and had determined it was going to be about 3500 lb total on the Uhaul trailer I had rented.
The person on the phone at the supplier had no idea what they were talking about–the total weight of the load + trailer I later calculated to be about 6500 lb.
After nearly jackknifing on the freeway, I had to take city streets for the 40 miles back to my company’s warehouse.
The trailer hitch on my Roadmaster is only rated up to 3500 lbs, but luckily it did fine. 1st Gear on the Roadmaster is also really tall (you can almost hit 60 mph in 1st Gear at redline), but with the LT1 V8 and lots of torque multiplication at the torque converter, I had no issues. Braking was weaker than I would have liked it to be, but the main issue was just how it would get wiggly at speeds higher than 50 mph.
I suspect that the trailer was weighted too heavy towards the back, but since the Users Manual for the Roadmaster recommends using an anti-sway bar for loads greater than 5000 lbs (up to a max of 7000 lbs), I’ll never know if it was the trailer or simply the realities of the situation.
A well written article with almost the proper mix of information and entertainment. I say almost and I think the author will agree as I am sure she got talked to about sharing her wife and mother’s weight to a large audience around the country.
I’m a big fan of the 80% rule. I also think this illustrates that 3/4 ton and above pickups that seemingly never have loads in the bed are not necessarily indicative of someone who wants something big – if you’re following the 80% rule and are bringing four people when you tow a medium size trailer, it seems to me that a 3/4 ton truck would be advisable.
What I really want for myself is a Suburban 2500. My understanding is that these do still exist but you have to buy them through GM’s fleet department. I wonder what their payload and tow ratings are, and how to actually acquire one. I’ve known people who have worked with the fleet department at GM to buy individual cars (Aussie built Caprices) but that was close to two decades ago.
I can never tell if the HD Suburban is actually being made or not. I THOUGHT they had ended with GMT800, but you can find all sorts of weird fleet HD suburbans after that. I’d be pretty happy with an 8.1 GMT800 with an Allison. Then, I’d proceed to never drive it because 8 MPG would suck lol.
The last fleet-only HD Suburban had a pretty massive payload capacity (4,400 lbs) and GVWR (11,000 lbs), but it was only rated to tow 3,000 lbs. The tow rating seems somewhat phoned in. I’m pretty sure that these were made strictly to be armored up for the State Department and towing was simply not on the radar.
These were built on the last generation chassis. They had a 6.0L engine and a 4.10 axle ratio, so they probably could tow a bit more than 3,000 lbs had GM put the effort into certifying a higher tow rating.
Thanks for updating the point about NOT twisting the chains, don’t need to perpetuate that bad practice. You are correct that many safety chain hooks are way too big, and that is a way you know that the people designing the trailer didn’t know exactly what they were doing. The type of hook shown in the twisted chain test shown first in that video is an example of a good hook that will pass through most safety chain attachment points. If you’ve got too large hooks you can always use properly rated shackles to do the attachment and maybe even cut off that oversized hook.
Are they still using safety hooks? I and all my experience over the last decade use a chain link that has a space that also is screwed shut. Like a climbers pyton but with a screw attachment holding it from slipping.
I do see some Quick Links sold for safety chain use, however the generic ones typically have fairly low working load limits. https://www.homedepot.com/p/TowSmart-Quick-Links-2-Pack-7280/318849319 note the 5k breaking strength. While these https://www.homedepot.com/p/CURT-1-2-Quick-Link-3-300-lbs-82932/205632945 note a 3300lb working limit. and the cheapies https://www.homedepot.com/p/Everbilt-5-16-in-Zinc-Plated-Quick-Link-42724/205887588 are half that.
The replacement S hooks available at HD are rated at a 5k working limit.
Meanwhile I found a video that implied that in Austrilia the law requires “shackles” and he specifically was testing rated and unrated bow shackles. They do fit through my hitches so the hook can connect back to the chain.
Best part about people that don’t know what they are doing? I get a 60k rig for under 30k after they trade it in on something bigger after less than a year. Woohoo Dodge depreciation!