# Help to diagnose what I did wrong?



## Beaver State RV'r

Hello: The wife and I bought our first RV last year: a 25 foot Springdale trailer. We took it out a couple times last year, no issues. This last week (Labor Day week) we took the trailer down to the beach and stayed in one of the State Parks, full hookup site. Again, no issues until we were packing up to leave. But first...

When we got to our site, the set up was as follows: get the trailer centered on the pad; drive up on a couple blocks to level side-to-side; chock the wheels; unhitch from the truck; adjust jack to level front to back; deploy the four stabilizer jacks on each corner; hook up water, power, and sewer; unfurl awning.

When it was time to leave, I started the process in reverse. First I rolled up the awning. Then I started to retract the four stabilizer jacks. I started with the front right jack, then the right rear, then the left rear, and that's when it happened. As I started winding the 3rd stabilizer jack up, the trailer rolled forward and to the side a bit! Shook the whole thing. And the front electric jack came completely off it's blocks, and was suspended in the air. Had it not been for the remaining front stabilizer jack, the front of the trailer would have come crashing down. Who knows what kind of damage to the jack that could have incurred. I quickly got the blocks back under the front jack, raised it up a bit, and quickly got the hitch backed up and hooked up.

I've been trying to diagnose why this happened; it hasn't happened before but as I said, this was only our third time to use it. My only thought was that I was going to wait to empty the gray and black tanks as my last chore. Could the weight of those two tanks (both about 2/3 full) have altered the center of gravity and caused this? However, last year we stayed at a KOA that didn't have sewer connections at each site, you dumped on your way out. And we didn't have this kind of issue then.

Any and all thoughts are appreciated. Thanks.


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## SCcamper

Did you chock your tires to prevent that sort of movement?


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## Beaver State RV'r

Yes, as I said in my original post, chock the wheels. The wheels we're chocked, and in fact when I chocked them I used a rubber mallet to seat them snug under the tires.

Anything else?


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## SCcamper

I said something about chocks because you said it rolled some so I thought you had removed the chocks.

Trailer balancing while parked at a campground/ RV park can change dramatically. We sometimes load things differently when away from home. The fresh and waste water tanks often cause the most problems. Take note of their locations and their volumes. Water is probably the heaviest cargo and those tanks do not often have sufficient baffling.


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## McKannick

Seems that the trailer rolled over the chocks / blocks. The only gadget I've seen that absolutely seems to 'lock' the wheels in place is a device that goes between the wheels and actually locks the tires in place. With these properly installed, I'm thinking you couldn't drag the trailer anywhere even if it were hitched.
 Here's a sample from Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/X-Chock-Whee...7&sr=8-1&keywords=camper+wheel+locking+chocks


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## Cynthia Richard

It is interesting of course that you would succeed. You need to go to a specialized clinic for complete diagnosis


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