How to Disconnect a Trailer

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Albert Hedgepeth with Expert Village. Today we're going to talk a little bit about trailer maintenance. What we're going to talk about now is the use of the jack which is actually used to lift the trailer up off the ground and to keep it level whenever you're parking on unleveled surfaces. First of all, you want to use the jack whenever you're disconnecting the trailer from the truck. You want to go ahead and chalk the wheels, make sure that the trailer's not going to roll anywhere once you take it off. Then you're going to come up here, you pop your cotter pin, release the trailer itself, go ahead and disconnect all your cables from the base of the truck. Its best to go ahead and wrap these guys around the trailer. Then you come over here. This is the jack right here. What you're going to on most of these guys that have a little stop on it, is you go ahead and pull out the cotter pin, let it drop to the ground, reseat it into one of the holes and then you're going to go ahead and roll it clockwise until it reaches the ground. At that point, you're going to start to see it lift up off the truck. Now what you're going to do is you're going to notice that the truck is actually lifting up. And what you're going to do, if it doesn't automatically release from the coupling is go ahead and put some weight on the bumper of the truck. This will go ahead and disengage the ball from the coupling and release the trailer from the ball mount. At this point, you've got the trailer jacked up. You want to go ahead and just make sure its leveled out and you're ready for storage."