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Originally Posted by TuffTitan
RodsTitan-
Although most trailers do use electrical controlers for their brakes, there are a lot that use "surge brake" technology. You will find these typically on cargo trailers and also equipment trailers. They do not require an electronic control device. Instead of getting an electronic signal to activate, they work using the forces applied by the truck. If you don't already have a trailer, you may want to inquire which type of brakes it has. This could prevent you from buying a controller if your trailer comes with a surge system.
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Surge brakes have there place but if you are going down a steep mountain
road and the trailer starts to sway you need to manually activate the trailer
brakes to stop the sway. Surge brakes as far as I know can't do this. Using
your tow vehicle brakes in this situation might make it worse as surge brakes
have a little bit of delay and this delay could increase the sway in certain
situations. Probably this is not a problem in the flat lands but I have seen
more than one trailer tip over going down long mountain passes. A little
tap on the manual brake funtion on the controller will settle the trailer down.
I know it is rare but it does happen. By the way if you don't have brakes
on your trailer and it starts to sway going down a long hill the correct procedure is to accelerate slightly which is not a good option if you are
trying to keep your speed down.
Zardoz