When it comes to towing a trailer — whether it's a travel trailer RV or a cargo trailer — one of the most important factors to stay on top of is its tongue weight, i.e. the force exerted by the trailer tongue on your tow vehicle's hitch/tow ball.

It's possible to have too much or too little weight placed on the hitch, causing hazardous situations such as extreme trailer sway or overloaded rear tires on your tow vehicle, leading to poor handling on the road. In the words of GMC, improper tongue weight is like “driving down the road on a vehicle with egg-shaped tires.”

To determine your trailer tongue weight, you can either pull into a weigh station and pay to have it checked, or you can pick up a portable tongue weight scale like these ones from Sherline. As long as you're parked and unhitched on a level surface, you can easily check your tongue weight at any time.

This video shows what that looks like in action, but essentially you just place the scale on a stack of solid wood or bricks, lower the trailer tongue onto the scale until the tongue jack is off the ground, and check your reading on the gauge. Easy peasy.

(I do highly recommend doing some Googling around on your own to research other details that pertain to all things trailer weight, as those are outside the scope of this post.)

The scale reads in both pounds and kilograms, and they have a few different weight capacities to choose from:

• LM 1000 ($125) for up to 1,000 pounds
• LM 2000 ($125) for up to 2,000 pounds
• LM 5000 ($123) for up to 5,000 pounds

They also offer a 5th wheel hitch weight scale ($227) with a 5,000-pound tongue weight capacity, in case that's the style of trailer you're pulling.