Editorial Policy

Who writes this site

One named author: Mike M., the hands-on owner behind Iron Mako Media. Every article, roundup, comparison, guide and checklist carries that byline, and it links to a page that says who that is.

There are no pen names on this site, no “staff” byline, and no expert panel. If a page is wrong there is one person to tell, and that is deliberate.

What this site will never claim

These are absolute, and they are the boundary that the rest of the site’s credibility rests on:

• Hands-on testing. We do not test these products. No test lab, no bench measurement, no “we installed this,” no “we towed with this.” The method page states what we do instead.
• Owned units or a named rig. We will not invent a tow vehicle, a trailer, or mileage we did not drive.
• Credentials we do not hold. No certifications, no licenses, no professional titles, no “reviewed by” a specialist who does not exist.
• Ratings or review counts we did not read. Marketplace figures are read automatically from the retailer or they do not appear.
• Prices we did not read. There is no price field in this site’s content model, so a price cannot be authored into a page. Every number is read automatically, date-stamped, and expires on its own.
• Reader reviews or testimonials. We have none, so there is no testimonials section on this site. An empty section is better than an invented one.

How claims are sourced

Three categories, and the page says which is which:

1. Published specifications. Manufacturer capacity sheets, ratings stamped on products, federal standards. Cited with a link and the month we read it.
2. Owner-reported experience. Where a page says owners consistently report something, that is reporting what owners say. It is written as reporting and never dressed up as our own experience.
3. Live marketplace signal. Price and availability read automatically from the retailer. Never typed.

Every roundup, comparison and reference page ends with a Sources section listing what we read and when. If a claim on this site has no source and is not obviously an editorial judgment, that is a defect worth reporting.

The separation between commerce and judgment

Trailer & Hitch earns affiliate commission. Four rules keep that from affecting what you read:

• No brand can pay for inclusion or for a ranking. None has, and none can.
• No sponsored content. Nothing on this site is written by or paid for by a brand.
• Commission does not decide the order. Where one retailer is better for the buyer — price, stock, warranty — we link it even when another pays more.
• The person writing the page is not negotiating the commission. The rubric is published, weighted and applied before the links go on.

The full commercial picture is on the affiliate disclosure page.

Corrections

We will get things wrong. The policy for when we do:

• Factual errors are corrected promptly once we can verify the correction.
• Substantive corrections are noted on the page — a claim that changed, not a typo — along with the date, so a reader who saw the original knows it changed.
• A product that is discontinued or no longer resolves comes off the page rather than staying on it with a dead link.
• A page that is substantially rewritten gets a new last-updated date. Dates on this site are real and are not refreshed to look current.

To report an error: email contact@trailerandhitch.com or use the contact form. Name the page and the claim.

Review and update cadence

• Prices: daily, automated, and they expire if the refresh stops.
• Product availability: with each price refresh.
• Roundups: at least annually, and sooner if a pick is discontinued, a significant product enters the category, or a reader reports a problem.
• Reference tables and standards citations: when the underlying standard or published specification changes.

On how pages are produced

Every page on this site is reviewed by the named author before it publishes, and the author is accountable for its claims. Where a figure appears, it came from one of the three sourcing categories above — a published specification, reported owner experience, or an automated marketplace read — and not from recollection.

The practical test we apply before publishing a claim is whether a reader could check it. If they could not, it does not go on the page.

Safety content

Some pages on this site are safety or diagnostic content rather than shopping content — what to do when a trailer starts to sway, why tires wear on the inside edge, whether you can plug into a 240 V outlet. Those pages deliberately carry no product picks, because the honest answer is “redistribute your load,” “get the axle measured” or “do not do that,” and bolting a tenuous product onto that advice would be worse than an empty page.

Where a page ships bare, it says so and says why.

What we will not advise on

We will not tell you what your specific vehicle can tow, confirm that a hitch fits your trailer, or sign off on a setup we cannot see. Those depend on your own door-jamb sticker, your own owner’s manual and your own measured tongue weight. The pages that walk you through getting those numbers are how much can my truck tow and how to measure tongue weight.