How we make sure Toto is on the level

I suppose you wouldn’t want your campsite to be perfectly level, would you? If it rained, the water wouldn’t run off and you’d be camping in a big puddle.

However, RVs (and their occupants) like being level. Refrigerators work better, people and dogs don’t slide off the bed, beverages don’t slide off the table. Level is good.

Making trailers like Toto level from front to back is easy, even on a slope, because trailers have tongue jacks. After you unhitch, adjust the jack until the little bubble in the curb-side bubble level is squarely between the two little lines. Easy.

Side-to-side is not so easy. You gotta drive your wheels on the low side onto something that’s just the right thickness to raise the low side just enough to, uh, no longer be low.

So you need to cart something around that you can use for that purpose. Some folks use pieces of wood, others have sets of stacking blocks that look like Lego pieces. And some people have Anderson levelers, like these:

This Anderson leveler is designed to support one wheel.

If you have two axles, of course, it means you have two tires on each side of your trailer. So you need a pair of whatever device you use — and one of the pair must be of a size and shape that will fit between the tires.

With the Anderson leveler, you just drive onto the big curvy piece. The farther you go, the higher you get, as it were. When the little bubble on the back of the trailer sits squarely between the two little black lines, you stop the truck, set the parking break, put the transmission in Park, and head back to the wheels. There, you wedge the smaller red piece (the chock) on the other side of the wheel, and you’re chocked. And level.

In this example, the Toto was on pretty level ground already — watch out for puddles!!! — so we barely had to drive the tires onto the levelers.

As with many RV accessories that are used outside, the Anderson Levelers are brightly colored. This, depending on user colorblindness and other factors, helps reduce the likelihood of the levelers being left behind at a campsite when one drives away. So far, this feature has worked for us. CONTEST: Guess where we’re parked in this picture and you win a bubble level.

You’re probably wondering how it is that I can see the bubble level on the back of the trailer while I’m driving the truck. Well, sure, I can’t. That’s why it’s always good to have a life partner — they’re great for watching the bubble and shouting helpful advice like “I think it’s level. You come look!”

(Here is another thing to know about Team Toto: we are an Eyes and Ears team. Sooz’s eyes don’t work so well, but mine are okay. My ears don’t work so well, but Sooz can hear just fine (Wally’s hearing is even better). So, while we’re leveling the trailer, Sooz squints at the bubble level, and shouts tentative advice, which I cannot hear very well. We are quite the team.)

So I use the time-tested GOAL (get out and look) method of parking and leveling the trailer. It’s fine. By the time we’re parking the rig I need to move around a lot anyway, to get blood flowing again after a drive.

Now, about Anderson levelers. Do we like ’em? Yes. They work fine. They weigh a bit (I think they have to be dense to be strong enough), but not too much. The price is as reasonable as all the other RV stuff, which is to say not quite as outrageous as boat stuff.

When we chose the Anderson Camper Leveler solution, we knew we’d have to alter them slightly. Someone mentioned on our beloved Escape Forum that the device was just a tad too long to fit between the two tires on either side of Toto, and they had cut the length down by just over an inch, and then filed the cut so it’s smooth and even and even mildly attractive.

So I did the same thing, last October. I am still finding little piles of red plastic dust in the garage. Anyway, easy to do.

Here is one piece of advice for you, should you decide to use an Anderson leveler with your camper. It’s good to pull the trailer forward onto them, rather than back onto them. Why? If you back onto them, sometimes, it pushes the trailer slightly forward over the hitch ball, and the trailer doesn’t want to lift off of the hitch ball when you go to unhitch, and you have to inch the truck forward, after setting the little red chocks, to relieve the binding situation. Not a problem if you’re pulled the trailer onto the levelers, which prevents getting in this particular bind.

We have not yet found a campsite so nearly level that we opted not to use these babies. But I bet it’s out there. Somewhere.