What's the correct weight or percentage of weight to have on the tongue of the trailer? What are the effects of having too little or too much tongue weight?

I don't build trailers for a living or anything but...

Too much tongue weight-
Poor braking/handling from your tow vehicle since your front tires aren't loaded properly.
Poor tire wear on the front trailer axle.
Overloaded front axle and tires. Blowout possible.
Exceeding manufacturer's tongue weight on the hitch, strength issues?

Not enough tongue weight-
Upward pull on the ball and hitch. Not good. You would be relying totally on the lock that slides under the ball to carry the weight.
Rear trailer tire issues.
Braking issues.


The boat should be centered over the axles to evenly distribute the weight, erring to the front by a couple hundred pounds from my understanding.

Get a scale and check the tongue weight. It should be 5% to 7% of the GVWR (GVWR = the combined weight of the boat, fuel and trailer). Too little or much will cause the trailer to wander and cause poor tire wear.
I.E. 10,000 = 500 lb. tongue weight at 5%.

Strike is right. I have always used 8-10% as a benchmark though. But you get the idea. Each trailer and vehicle application requires some fine tuning but you should have a good starting point.

Too little tongue wt will cause the tail to wag. Takes wt off the rear axle of tow vehicle and everything gets squirrely.

I don't know a whole lot about tongue weight, but I believe Mick Jagger's weighs about 27 pounds...

WM

Thanks, and you are so right about each trailer being different! And each tow vehicle will react different as well. If you get into heavier trailers though, 10% would be a bit much.

You figured it out !
8-10% is what they say . But if you have 18000 lbs worth of boat and trailer then you would rip the hitch off with 1800lbs of tongue weight ! Try not to go past the rated tongue weight of the hitch if you are not using weight distributing . If you use WD you can get more weight rating out of it . Also without WD you have to consider the tow vehicle . If you put 600lbs of tongue weight on a dually and 600 lbs on a toyota , IT MAY HANDLE DIFFERENT !! I know the weight distibuting is a whole nother bad subject . The best thing is to have the right vehicle to tow what you are towing and you won't need it . Too many people trying to pull 47 Apaches on their BMW SUV's !!

I don't agree with 8-10. Load Rite and Eagle both come up with 5-7. But at least we can agree to disagree, hey?

8 to 10% of the combined weight of the boat, fuel and trailer Is the standard. Over 500lb,s of tongue wt. manufactures often require load distributing bars. Trailer boat magazine Is good source of Info. Remember to tow big you have to get big.