First-Trailer Essentials & Tires

There are two kinds of page in this section: lists of gear, and tires. The lists are here because a new trailer comes with almost nothing and the shopping advice online is mostly somebody’s whole garage. The tire pages are here because a trailer tire failure is the single most common way a trip ends badly, and it is almost entirely preventable.

What you actually need before the first trip

A short list, and nothing on it is exciting: a drinking-water hose, a pressure regulator, a sewer hose kit and a hose support, wheel chocks, something to level with, a surge protector, and a tire pressure gauge that reads high enough for trailer tires. That is the trip-critical set. Everything else — the outdoor rug, the second set of levelers, the fancy mattress — is a comfort purchase you can make after you know how you camp. The full must-have list is here, and the under-$300 version is for people who want the whole thing in one order.

Tires: the part that will surprise you

Trailer tires do not wear out. They age out. A travel trailer typically does a few thousand miles a year and spends the rest of the time parked in the sun, and the failure mode is the sidewall degrading from UV and ozone while the tread still looks almost new. The date code molded into the sidewall matters more than the tread depth, and the widely used rule of thumb is to replace trailer tires at three to five years regardless of how they look.

Date code: the four digits in an oval on the sidewall, after the letters DOT and the rest of the code. “2225” means the 22nd week of 2025. That is the tire’s birthday, and it is the number that decides when it gets replaced.

A tire marked ST is a special trailer tire: stiffer sidewalls, higher inflation pressure, and a speed rating that is often lower than a car tire. A tire marked LT is a light truck tire designed to steer and to put power down, which a trailer tire never has to do. The two compared is one of the more argued-about questions in towing, and the short version is that ST is what your trailer’s placard specifies and there has to be a real reason to deviate.

Three practical habits follow from that. Run them at the pressure on the sidewall when cold — unlike car tires, ST tires are generally specified at their maximum. Cover them when the trailer is parked for weeks. And consider a tire pressure monitoring system, because a trailer tire going down is invisible from the driver’s seat until it comes apart, and a monitor is the one accessory that tells you first.

Checklists, because memory fails at 7am

The two checklists in this section exist because the mistakes that cost real money are the boring ones: pulling away with the TV antenna up, with a step out, with the fridge door unlatched, with the jacks down. Print them, laminate them, keep them inside a cabinet door. Arriving and leaving are separate lists on purpose, because they are different jobs in different orders.

Tire standards are public if you want the underlying detail: FMVSS 109 covers new pneumatic tire requirements including load ratings and sidewall marking, and the Tire Industry Association publishes guidance on inspection and aging.