# Triple Towing??



## watermonkey (Aug 11, 2009)

Haven't seen that exact configuration before, but here in Colorado during hunting season its common to see a truck towing a camper trailer and an ATV trailer behind that. Check with an RV shop, they might have some insight. I see it often enough that I would guess it's legal here too.


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## Dave Frank (Oct 14, 2003)

If your trailer isn't wired to tow another, you have a few easy options: split it at the truck and use a pre-made extension or wire up your own. Or you might as well add a wiring harness to the camper trailer. Lots of pre-fabbed stuff out there, if you are not into wiring.

Good luck backing that combo up!


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## asleep.at.the.oars (May 6, 2006)

I know that Utah recently changed the rules so that depending on the relative weight of trailer combo vs. tow vehicle the trailers all had to have brakes. Not sure if other states are adopting the same, and I've never needed to look into it for Colorado. So, while it might be legal to tow 2 trailers, the weight might throw it into a ticket.
Also, make sure the hitch receiver on your pop up is actually rated to tow, and isn't just a bike rack mount. 

Advice for backing a double trailer: be good enough backing a single trailer that you can think of all the movements from the middle trailer's perspective.


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## jwithers (Mar 18, 2011)

I live in Montana and have alot of buddies that tow their 30-40' 5th wheel with a 18-20' jet boat attached to the camper. When I tow my 5th wheel I just put the raft In a boat bag, but thats cause I don't want 40-50 of trailer. People in MT are crazy about their recreation.


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## pbowman (Feb 24, 2004)

i did it for one summer in colorado, and had to figure out quite a few things to make my set up work. PM sent with some of my findings. later.


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## Stiff N' Wett (Feb 18, 2010)

Could you put that boat ontop of the popup trailer


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## Eddy Groover (Mar 25, 2005)

My buddy and I have done this type of a setup. It is great for running shuttle with just the two of us. Neither has to breakdown and we both end up with our boats sitting on our own trailers. The problem that we encountered was that without the first trailer being a 5th wheel the last trailer starts whipping around at any speeds over 45-50 mph. Thus we are confined to backroads not interstate. We even messed with weighting and leveling of the trailers. Neither helped that much. We didn't attempt stablizing bars which could be another possible solution.


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## asleep.at.the.oars (May 6, 2006)

pbowman said:


> i did it for one summer in colorado, and had to figure out quite a few things to make my set up work. PM sent with some of my findings. later.


Would love to get the info publically if you'd be willing


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## pbowman (Feb 24, 2004)

*here goes . . .*

i sent the PM originally because my post ended up being quite long. here is what i sent chefpels:

i did it for one summer in colorado, take this picture and insert pop-up between truck and raft. http://www.mountainbuzz.com/forums/members/609-albums385-picture1875.jpg

my set up was a f150, a fleetwood taos pop-up (8 x 6 box, the smallest size), and a 4 x 10 utility trailer with 15ft raft. it is legal to do in colorado, and i passed several cops on my summer trips that did not pull me over. one requirement in colorado is that the middle trailer (pop up in my case) has to have trailer brakes.

i had to build the rear receiver hitch for my pop-up, no hitch shops would install one and the estimate i got from a local welder was $700. i pieced it together with heavy angle iron from a local steel shop and a HF bolt on bumper receiver hitch. i spent about $200 on my hitch. 

one thing you need to be very conscious of is the loading on the raft trailer to maintain reasonable tongue weight, but not over loading the raft trailer to cause a decrease of the pop-up tongue weight. theoretically, if you put 200# on the raft trailer tongue, the lever action thru the pop-up axle will decrease the pop-up tongue by the same amount (more/less). for my set up, i found the tongue weight of my pop-up was around 300 +/-, while the tongue weight of my raft trailer was less than 100, so there was still good tongue weight on the pop-up. the trailer i put my raft on is extremely light weight and seemed to work well for this set up, but i think some heavier utility trailers might be a problem. i was told that main objective is to always maintain significant tongue weight on the middle trailer, and that will help minimize sway in both trailers.

the only time i would see any issues with sway on the raft trailer was on long down hill stretches with lots of curves (like on vail pass or down from eisenhower), and if the pop-up got bouncing a little. my guess is that the bouncing of the pop-up would zero out the tongue weight of the raft trailer, and thus allow it to sway easily. i would handle this by keeping my speed relatively low around 50-55 on long down hills with curves. other than that, i could travel at typical highway speeds on the interstate at 65-70 with no issues.

for lights, i put a combo RV/4 pin connector on my truck, and then ran a 4 wire kit under my pop-up and zip tied it to the frame. when pulling both trailers, i just plugged them both into the combo connector on the truck and both sets of lights worked fine.

ultimately, my wife did not like towing both trailers. we sold the pop-up and bought a van to camp with instead, so now we can just pull the raft behind that. good luck with your set up. later.


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