Camco Elite Weight Distribution Hitch, 1,000 lb Tongue, Sway Control

Towing a heavy boat trailer is a different animal than pulling a small utility trailer. Once you're loaded with fuel, gear, and a full livewell, all that tongue weight pushes down on the back of your tow vehicle, lifts the front end, and takes the steering light. The Camco Elite weight distribution hitch fixes that. It uses a pair of round spring bars to transfer load off the trailer tongue and spread it evenly across the axles of both the truck and the trailer, so the rig sits level and drives the way it should.

This kit is rated for 1,000 pounds of tongue weight and 10,000 pounds of gross trailer weight. That covers most single and tandem-axle boat trailers hauling anything from a 20-foot center console up through a heavier glass hull. The 2-5/16 inch hitch ball and the adjustable shank both come in the box, so you're not chasing extra parts to get set up. Built-in sway control is the part boaters notice most. When a semi blows past or a gust catches the side of the hull on the highway, the friction built into the head keeps the trailer from wagging behind you.

Who's this for? Anybody whose loaded trailer tongue weight starts pulling the back of the tow vehicle down. If your truck squats when you hitch up, your headlights aim high, and the steering goes light, that's the tongue weight talking, and it's exactly what this system is built to correct. It's just as at home behind a half-ton pickup towing a bass boat as it is behind an SUV pulling a heavier fishing rig out to the coast. The round-bar design also keeps decent ground clearance, which matters when you're dropping down a steep, broken launch ramp and don't want the bars dragging.

Setup is where a weight distribution hitch earns its keep, and it pays to measure before you bolt anything up. Get the drop or rise you need by measuring from the ground to the top of your coupler with the trailer level, then to the top of your receiver. Boat trailers often ride high, especially aluminum ones, so it's not unusual to need to flip the shank or add a riser to get the ball at the right height. We've seen plenty of guys guess at this and end up with a nose-high trailer that fights them the whole way. Take the ten minutes to measure.

Once the ball height is right, you set the spring-bar tension so the truck and trailer come back to level. On a boat that's loaded heavy in the stern, expect to snug the bars a little more, and check them again after your first real trip because they'll settle. Keep the bars and the sway control friction surfaces greased. Dry bars chatter and can bind on tight, slow turns like the ones you make backing around a launch ramp or a fuel dock. A quick shot of grease each season keeps everything smooth.

If you're running electric trailer brakes, this hitch plays nicely with a good brake controller. Set the gain in the 6.0 to 6.5 range as a starting point and adjust from a real stop, because over-braking makes the round bars chatter and undoes some of that planted feel. And if you tow in salt, do yourself a favor and pull the sway control apart once a year to clean and re-grease it. Salt spray off the ramp works its way into the friction surfaces, and a unit that's been ignored for a few seasons won't hold sway the way it did new.

This is a real tool, not a bolt-on gimmick, and it does ask for a proper setup. But once it's dialed in, the difference is night and day. The boat tracks straight, the truck sits level, your headlights point at the road instead of the trees, and a long haul to the lake stops wearing you out. For anyone towing a heavier trailer more than a few miles, weight distribution isn't a luxury. It's how you keep the whole rig under control.