First trip with new Solitude...How to deal with harsh ride on rough roads

[gulfstreamg5]

Hello everyone... I am new to the forum and while my family has enjoyed RVing for several years (class A), this is our first experience with a fifth wheel. We bought a 2019 Solitude 3740 last month and are pulling it with a Ford F350 dually (diesel). We love the RV itself but after 3700 miles on rough interstates over the last couple of weeks, I am about ready to go back to camping in a tent... HA...
The hitch we are using is a B&W companion, the tire pressures on the truck and the Solitude are all set to mfg recommendations and the F350 is well within its load ratings. According to the scales I had about 21 to 22% trailer weight on the pin. The issue we had was the incredibly harsh vertical jerks we were getting over expansion joints. There was certainly an occasional noticeable feeling of being pushed and pulled by the fifth wheel, but the vertical slamming was just about unbearable. Can anyone tell a newbie whether I should be looking at a different pin box or perhaps a different type of hitch?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated! We love the fifth wheel and I love my truck... just not together on rough roads... (smooth roads are fine - you hardly know you're pulling anything)
THANK YOU!
Eric

[RVRunners]

B&W makes a great hitch so I think you are fine there. I have the same one. The roads are definitely bad in some areas. We just used I-10 through Louisiana to get to Texas an it was rough shape to be sure. I am taking our truck on Monday for a set of AirLift 5000 Ultimate Plus air bags. I believe this will make traveling a lot more pleasant. I hope you get something figured out. Good luck!

[gulfstreamg5]

Thanks for that idea! The truck and RV sit straight, so I hadn't thought about air bags, but perhaps that would help with the ride! I'll be curious to learn how they help you!

[bertschb]

Can anyone tell a newbie whether I should be looking at a different pin box or perhaps a different type of hitch?

Welcome to the forum Eric

The B&W Companion is an excellent hitch - it just doesn't absorb any motion. Hence the rough ride on rough roads.

An air bag hitch will absorb a lot of the up and down motion that you experience while driving on rough roads - especially those with expansion joints. There are a couple of different companies that make them. I'm only familiar with the Hensley (Trailersaver) hitches. I had the Hensley BD3 for my Reflection. It mounted to standard bed rails in my old truck. When we bought our heavier Solitude, we sold the BD3 and bought the new Hensley BD5 which is made for heavier 5th wheels like the Solitude. It uses the standard factory Ford or RAM puck system so it drops right in.

Here is a video I took of my old Hensley BD3 hitch. It's a very basic video filmed on very smooth roads but you get the idea of how the hitch absorbs vertical motion.


The hitch isn't cheap. I think I paid $3,000 (or $3,500?). But, it's very well built and will give you what I consider the smoothest ride you can get towing a 5th wheel. Standard hitches with "hard" connections transmit 100% of the motion of the 5th wheel to the truck (and your back). Air bag hitches absorb a lot of this motion.

You can also get air bag and shock absorber pin boxes that will also absorb some of the vertical motion. I chose an air bag hitch rather than an air bag pin box because the hitch has much larger air bags to absorb more motion. I also wanted a hitch I could use with any 5th wheel in case I change to another RV down the road.

Others may claim a "standard" (non air bag) hitch will smooth out rough roads but simple physics tells me otherwise.

Good luck!

[FT4NOW]

Is your trailer level with the RV when hooked up? If not, you could try to adjust hitch height. Air bags would also help make the truck and trailer level. I'm also a fan of Air Lift, I put them on my truck and noticed a big improvement.

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[JCR GD]

I had the very same harsh "vertical slamming" w/ my f350 dually. The truck was carrying the load just fine but when hitting a bump the suspension would "hit" the heavy load spring. It was a good jolt. If the truck would actually ride on that leaf it would probably be fine but hitting it, not so good. Soooo I add airbags to lift a bit and avoid hitting that leaf. I went with the Airlift 5000 with remote. It worked great and much better ride.

[WhittleBurner]

We have an AirSafe hitch and it makes almost all those bridge transitions pretty tame (unless the hitch was aired up to much)
I would also look into Comfort Ride hitches (air cells no airing necessary) , we hadn't known about them when we bought our hitch if we had it would of made for a hard choice between the 2.

The air style hitches are a chunk of change but well worth it. It's saved my back on many occasions.

[JColeman]

We added air bags to our rig for both leveling and a better ride. My psuedo-scientific tests with bags inflated vs uninflated were pretty conclusive for me. The bags do a great job of cushioning the rig from the truck.

[WhittleBurner]

With any of these hitches will also take out vertical motion along with horizontal. I know our Air-Safe has 4 bags one in each corner so they will not only help with going over bumps but also the chucking you will get from them too. There's 2 shocks one on either side of the hitch to control the motion so it doesn't just keep bouncing. The manufactures say they will take out 95% of the chucking and banging. All of this control you get also helps with the beating the trailer will get from towing as well as the truck not get beat to death either.

[Capt Jim]

I, too, needed a little bit of lift to level the trailer and installed air bags. The ride improvement was a bonus I didn't really expect. Also, if you want to save a little money, it's a pretty easy do-it-yourself project.

Safe Travels.

Jim