Loading a 2970RL

[jdean61]

How many times have we all heard to spread out our cargo, food, clothes supplies etc, evenly in the trailer to make the weight evenly distributed when traveling. I find this very difficult in our 2970RL, as all the cabinets, closets, pantry are on the driver's side of the camper. Anyone who has a 2970 have any suggestions specifically for this model? Thanks

[trailrydr]

Not neccessarily your trailer, but we store everything we load extra for the trip over the axles or as close to it we can get. Unless we load up the bikes on the rear carrier and have to counter the weight forward, the loading over/next-to the axles works best for us and our towing experience. Dont have to guess on countering the weight, and its easier to always do the same each and every time.

[failproof]

I honestly haven’t worried too much about the side to side distribution, the pair of recliners and the dinette on the passenger side are likely heavy enough to compensate for all the food and clothing on the driver side. The slide out on the passenger side is also considerably wider (and heavier) than the one on the driver side. Usually I am more worried about not overloading the back vs front, because too much weight behind the axles will cause more sway while traveling. The front cargo bay helps with that a lot.
When I think about it though, I store my camp chef table and stove, grill and dutch ovens on the passenger side of the front cargo bay, which are all a bit heavier than some of the other gear I store on the driver side, so maybe that helps a little, but so far it really hasn’t been a concern for me.

[wudwork]

I agree, its frustrating. We had problems with our kitchen slide going in/out. GD identified several problems with the swintech system and they replaced the entire mechanism, twice within 6 months. We were forever worried about too much stuff on that slide and those concerns are warranted. GD finally directed my local service center to put shims under the kitchen slide rollers. They take the weight off the swintech mechanicals. After that the slide moves properly but we still try to somehow balance the weight.

How many times have we all heard to spread out our cargo, food, clothes supplies etc, evenly in the trailer to make the weight evenly distributed when traveling. I find this very difficult in our 2970RL, as all the cabinets, closets, pantry are on the driver's side of the camper. Anyone who has a 2970 have any suggestions specifically for this model? Thanks

[jnoyes]

We don’t worry too much about packing away from the “heavy” side of our 2970RL. We do try to keep the heavy items low in the pantry (canned goods, canned drinks, etc.).

If we carry extra water in the 2.5 gallon jugs, or extra seltzer in the 12 can cases, I always put that stuff in under the pull-out sofa in the rear. This rig has so much tongue weight you’ll never do anything to hurt the front-rear balance if you’re carrying the usual stuff in your pass-thru. It’s even more true if you carry any fresh water in the tank. Nearly every pound of that is right on the tongue.

When we carried e-bikes (a failed experiment in our case,) I thru bolted d rings with washers in the passenger side (dinette) slide floor so we could tie them down, removing the dinette table temporarily. You could always secure heavier things in containers around the dinette table if you were really concerned about side to side balance.

Finally, when we did our solar/lithium setup I DID take the heavy driver side into consideration. I put all the solar panels on the passenger side, and located all 3 206ah lithium batteries on the passenger side under the bed.