What Size Drop Hitch Do I Need?

People look for a drop hitch chart and it does not exist, for a reason worth understanding before you spend money. Drop is not a property of your truck and it is not a property of your trailer. It is the gap between the two, so a 6 in drop that tows a utility trailer dead level behind a stock half-ton is wrong for the same truck with a leveling kit, wrong for the same truck towing a taller travel trailer, and wrong again after the rear springs settle a season. Any chart that claims to answer it has quietly guessed at one side of the subtraction.

Drop: the vertical distance from the top of the ball mount’s shank to the ball platform, measured with the mount in the orientation you will tow in. A mount with a 4 in drop puts the ball 4 in lower than the top of the receiver opening. Flip many fixed mounts over and the drop becomes a rise — but check the maker’s rating before you do, because inverted capacity is often lower.

The two measurements

CURT publishes the method, and it is the one every reputable ball mount maker uses. Measure the distance from the ground to the top of the inside of your hitch receiver, and the distance from the ground to the bottom of the trailer coupler. The difference is your drop or rise. Two details decide whether the number is any good.

1. 1

   Put both vehicles on level ground

   Not a sloped driveway. A slope tilts both measurements by different amounts and the error lands entirely in the subtraction. A flat parking lot is worth driving to.
2. 2

   Load the truck the way you tow it

   Fuel, passengers, gear, bikes in the bed. A loaded truck sits lower at the rear than an empty one, and measuring empty is the most common way people end up with the wrong mount. If you tow with a weight distribution hitch, see the warning further down — that changes the exercise.
3. 3

   Measure A: ground to the top of the inside of the receiver tube

   Hook the tape on the ground, read it at the top inside edge of the square opening. Not the outside of the tube, not the bottom of the opening. Write it down.
4. 4

   Level the trailer, then measure B: ground to the bottom of the coupler

   Put a level across the trailer frame and raise or lower the tongue jack until it reads level. Then measure from the ground to the bottom of the coupler. This is the height the coupler wants to sit at when you tow.
5. 5

   Subtract, and note which way round it came out

   If the receiver reading is the larger number, that difference is the drop you need. If the coupler reading is larger, the same difference is a rise. The size of the number is the same either way; the direction is what you order.
6. 6

   Allow about an inch for squat

   The truck settles at the rear once the trailer is actually coupled, so a combination that is dead level uncoupled ends up slightly nose-high under tow. Roughly an extra inch of drop absorbs that, which is another argument for an adjustable mount: you can correct it after the first tow instead of guessing.
7. 7

   Check the ball size separately

   Drop and ball diameter are unrelated and both have to be right. The size is stamped on the coupler — the ball size chart covers reading it and what happens if you get it wrong.

Why level matters more than it sounds

Towing nose-high is not a cosmetic problem. A trailer that rides with its nose up shifts weight off the tongue and rearward onto the trailer’s own axles, which reduces the tongue weight percentage holding the rig straight — and low tongue weight is one of the principal causes of trailer sway. It also loads the rear trailer axle harder than the front one on a tandem, which is a tire wear and tire failure problem rather than a handling one.

Nose-down has its own costs: ground clearance at the tongue disappears on a steep driveway or a dip at a site entrance, the front trailer axle takes the extra load, and braking transfers more weight forward onto a tongue that is already heavy. Level is the target, and a small amount of nose-down is the more tolerable error of the two for most trailers.

Getting it level also makes everything else you measure meaningful. A tongue weight reading taken with the trailer nose-high is not the tongue weight you will tow with, which is why the tongue weight page starts by telling you to level the trailer first.

The capacity trap on deep drops

This is the part the chart-shaped question hides, and it is the part that matters most if your truck is lifted. A ball mount’s capacity rating is not a fixed number for the casting — it falls as the drop gets deeper, because a deeper drop puts the load further from the receiver and multiplies the leverage on the hitch pin and the receiver tube. The same adjustable mount is frequently rated for one gross trailer weight in its shallow holes and a lower one in its deepest hole.

So the sequence has to be: find your drop first, then find a mount rated for your loaded trailer weight at that drop. Doing it the other way around — buying the mount for its headline rating and then discovering the rating applies two holes up from where you need the ball — is how people end up towing on a mount that is, on paper, overloaded.

Two smaller specifications worth checking before you order. The shank has to match your receiver size — a 2 in shank does not fit a 2-1/2 in receiver without an adapter, and adapters add their own leverage. And the hole spacing on an adjustable mount sets how finely you can tune the height: a mount that adjusts in 1 in steps can land you half an inch off level and have no answer for it.

The mounts worth buying

Andersen Rapid Hitch, 3410. The top pick because it answers the actual problem this page describes. Six inches of drop or rise across its adjustment range, a dual ball with 2 in and 2-5/16 in heads, and an aluminum body that is light enough to carry in one hand. If you do not yet know your exact drop, or you tow a travel trailer and a utility trailer with different coupler heights, this is the mount that stops being wrong when something changes. The cons: aluminum scuffs where steel would shrug, it costs several times what a fixed mount does, and the adjustment range caps out at 6 in, which is not enough for a seriously lifted truck.

Weigh Safe adjustable hitch with tongue weight scale. The same adjustable idea with a gauge in the shank that reads tongue weight every time you hook up, 4 in of adjustable drop and a 12,500 lb gross trailer weight rating. The argument for it is that tongue weight is the number that changes most often and gets checked least; a mount that shows it turns a once-a-year measurement into a glance. The cons: it is the most expensive mount here, the gauge reads static tongue weight and is not a substitute for a proper scale if you need precision, and the aluminum body wants keeping clean.

Adjustable ball mount, 9-1/2 in drop. The value pick, and the one to buy if your drop figure came out large. It covers 9-1/2 in of drop and 8-1/4 in of rise, includes a screw-in locking pin, and costs a fraction of the branded aluminum mounts. The honest cons matter here: the 7,500 lb capacity is the lowest in this list and that figure deserves checking against your own loaded trailer weight at your actual drop, it is heavy steel, and it is a generic product rather than a named brand with a long warranty record.

BulletProof Hitches 2 in aluminum adjustable, 14,000 lb. The one to buy when the capacity number is what is binding rather than the drop. Fourteen thousand pounds of rating in a corrosion-resistant aluminum body with a dual ball, which is a lot of capacity without the weight of an equivalent steel mount. The cons: only 2 in of drop or rise, so it solves capacity and not geometry; it is priced accordingly; and like every aluminum mount it marks more easily than steel.

GEN-Y Mega-Duty 12.5 in drop. The deepest drop here and a fixed one, rated at 10,000 lb and made in the USA. This is the mount for a lifted truck whose measurement came out past what the adjustables reach. The cons are the cons of all deep fixed drops: it is one height and only one, the leverage at 12.5 in is exactly the loading the capacity section above is about, and it is heavy. Buy it when you have measured and you know. Our lifted-truck drop hitch roundup is the longer version of that case, and the adjustable ball mount roundup covers the rest of the adjustable field.

How we picked

The measurement method on this page is CURT’s published method, cited rather than paraphrased from memory, and the worked examples are arithmetic rather than measurements of real vehicles — we say so in the table caption because a made-up truck measurement would be worthless to you. The mount capacities, drops and ball sizes are each maker’s published figures, and every listing was confirmed live and in stock before it was featured. We have not towed with all five. Where a capacity varies by adjustment position, the maker’s own rating for your hole is the one that governs, not the headline on the box. Current prices come from retailer listing data read automatically and date-stamped. The rubric and its weights are on how we pick.