Road Use Laws: Triple Towing
Dave SolbergDescription
Triple towing – towing, for instance, a boat behind a trailer behind a truck – is legal in some but not all states according to road use laws. These laws dictate things such as total length and number of vehicles. RV expert Dave Solberg recommends that you be sure to look up whether your triple tow is legal in each state you’ll be driving in. What’s more, if you do decide to hook up three vehicles, always always always hook up properly, with safety chains and a breakaway cable connecting each vehicle. Ensure that it’s legal and safe.
So I've traveled across this country quite a bit and I've seen sometimes where you have a truck pulling a trailer and a boat or even another trailer behind it, we call that triple toe. And I get, people ask me, is that legal? Uh, it is legal in some states but not all states. And what it's called is road use laws. And that dictates the length, the number of vehicles, uh, various things like that and each state has its own individual one.
So you have a truck pulling a trailer and they want to take the boat with them. And here's a classic example, this trailer we've been working on, it's got a hitch that's mounted directly to this back bumper here with a light socket and so forth. So evidently they had a truck with a trailer and a boat behind it. And one of the things that you're gonna find is that a lot of times it's to the interpretation of the officer that stops you. Well, so it's important to you understand what road use laws you have in your state.
And if you're going to triple toe, is it legal in the state you're going to do, they have reciprocating state laws that allow you to be legal for what is in that state. And if you're going to hook up, make sure you hook up properly with the safety chains and the breakaway cable, just like you would in the front tra trailer. So sometimes there's a difference between being legal and being safe and I like to err on the safe side.
It's called double towing not triple towing. You only have two trailers not three. You do not count the tractor (or pickup ). The only time you would call it triple towing is if the pickup and the two trailers are hooked to the back of a tow truck.