How a Weight Distribution Hitch (WDH) works. – Best Camping and Caravanning Sites in Australia

To explain how a Weight Distribution Hitch (WDH) works, it helps to first understand the problem it is designed to solve: the “Teeter-Totter” effect.

Here is a breakdown of how the WDH interacts with your tow vehicle and caravan to correct this issue.

1. The Problem: The Teeter-Totter Effect

When you lower a heavy caravan coupling onto your vehicle’s tow ball, all that weight (tongue weight) pushes down on the vehicle’s rear axle.

Because the rear axle acts as a pivot point (fulcrum), two things happen:

The Rear Squats: The back of the tow vehicle creates a “sag.”
The Front Lifts: The front of the tow vehicle rises up.

Why is this dangerous?

Steering: Your front tires lose contact pressure with the road, making steering “floaty” or unresponsive.
Braking: Front brakes provide the majority of your stopping power. If there is less weight on them, you cannot stop as quickly.
Visibility: Your headlights point up into the sky (or oncoming drivers’ eyes) rather than at the road.

2. The Solution: How the WDH Interacts

A WDH stops the tow vehicle and the caravan from operating as two separate hinged units and forces them to act more like a single, rigid frame.

It achieves this through Spring Bars. These bars attach to the hitch head on the vehicle and are then leveraged up and chained (or bracketed) to the caravan’s A-frame.

The Wheelbarrow Analogy

The best way to visualize this interaction is to imagine a wheelbarrow:

The Caravan is the wheelbarrow bucket.
The Hitch is the wheelbarrow handles.
The WDH Spring Bars are you lifting the handles.

When you lift the handles of a wheelbarrow, you aren’t removing the weight of the load; you are leveraging it. Two things happen:

Some weight shifts forward onto your arms (the Tow Vehicle’s Front Axle).
Some weight shifts backward onto the wheelbarrow’s wheel (the Caravan’s Axles).

3. Where does the weight go?

The WDH does not “remove” weight from the total rig; it redistributes it across all axles.

Axle	Effect of WDH	Result
Vehicle Front Axle	Gains Weight	Restores steering control, braking efficiency, and headlight aim.
Vehicle Rear Axle	Loses Weight	Eliminates the “sag” or squat, preventing suspension bottoming out.
Caravan Axles	Gains Weight	Helps the caravan track better and reduces sway.

4. The Interaction in Motion

Once the WDH is engaged, the interaction changes how the rig handles dynamic forces on the road:

Bridge Effect: The tension in the spring bars creates a “bridge” across the coupling. This resists the natural tendency of the vehicle and caravan to hinge vertically over bumps.
Friction & Sway Control: Many modern WDH systems rely on the friction of the steel bars sliding on the brackets to resist side-to-side movement, effectively acting as a sway controller.
Ride Comfort: Because the vehicle is level, the suspension travel is restored to its neutral position, allowing the shock absorbers to dampen bumps effectively rather than being fully compressed.

Summary

Without a WDH, the weight is concentrated on the vehicle’s rear axle. With a WDH, the tension creates a lever that spreads that weight across all three sets of axles (Vehicle Front, Vehicle Rear, and Trailer).