I've not had that problem (I think I have a Fulton jack) but my boat is probably not as heavy as yours. It may be that you have too much weight forward for the jack. You may want to try to stop at a weight station (when not in operation) and weight the unit itself and just the weight with the tongue jack on the scale to see where you end up.

 

I have had that thought. I doubt that in total it's much more than 3000lbs. Still though, I have been meaning to stop at a weigh station. I should have stopped north of redmond yesterday but didn't even think of it. I think the bigger issue is that as so often the case, the previous owner or dealer maxed out the boat and minimized the trailer. I don't remember the specifics but I seem to recall the boat basically being at 90% of the trailer's rated capacity. Because the trailer is a bit small for the boat (in my opinion) the boat needs to be very far forward on the trailer which puts a lot of weight on the tongue (I think).

 

i feel your pain! My current trailer came with a double wheel Jack that works flawless and turns with ease. I’m not sure if this is the exact one or not.

 

It is such an irritating phenomenon. Seems like something with a larger rubber tire would work--but probably wouldn't stow properly.

 

I've been thinking about this more. My cheapo harbor freight jack does not use bearings. That is, the wheel assembly is welded to the leg which sits in the tube. Thus, for the wheels to turn, the whole leg has to turn within the tube. As is common with trailer jacks, the wheel axle is offset from the center of the leg. I'm guess that this means that the leg ends up pressing against the inside of the tube which makes it difficult to turn due to friction.

The most obvious solution I see would be to use a heavy duty caster welded to the leg. That would allow the wheel to rotate independent of the leg. Looking at various models online, this might actually be implemented on several models already. However, none of them seem to actually spell out that that is what they are doing.

 

you may be able to find a new foot for it online. I know my previous travel trailer had a metal plate on the tongue jack but it also came with a wheel attachment (it was lighter).

 

Tempted to take the angle grinder and cut the wheel bracket off the leg of my existing jack and then bolt this to it.

Rated for 500lbs and has a zerk for greasing it, plus a lot of reviewers apparently had the same idea and mention trailer jacks.

I would weld it on but the existing jack is zinc plated and I don't want to deal with zinc fumes.

 

The original trailer that came under my boat had a Fulton f2 1600. I got used to it and had to replace the trailer with a temp trailer. Recently got a new ezloader with one of those dinky Fulton default jacks and just replaced it with another Fulton f2. The difference is night and day. I can push it around much easier and it's very easy to turn left/right manually

 

I’ve had the same frustrations in the past. If the wheel landed anywhere close to 90° off where I wanted to push it, I’d have to kick it to align. It was a cheap-o jack that came on an EZ Loader.

Seems like someone would make a decent setup that relied on a tapered roller bearing with a spindle to make that thing to rotate easily.

 

I had an F2 on my previous trailer. Great Jack. You could also, get better / wider wheels and swap with a possible axle change.

 

Quick update on project make harbor freight jack usable. I pulled it off the trailer yesterday. Went to cut the welds with my angle grinder and couldn't find my respirator or goggles.

The foot looks to be close enough in dimensions to the caster that I should be able to bolt it through.

 

Went to cut the welds with my angle grinder and couldn't find my respirator or goggles.

Pffffffttttt. I always have my safety squints on me.

 

I’ve been using a bunch of cut off wheels the last week working on my new trailer. They sure don’t make those as durable as they used to be. I went though a dozen wheels last week and wished I had tanks and gages for my blue tip speed wrench a few times.

 

Fulton F2 don't suck, I have had several and really like them. I just listed one in classifieds.

 

I also have an F2. I broke the first one I had when the tongue was dropped accidentally, and Fulton sent me a new one, no questions asked. They didn't even want the old one back.

 

Ok, I gave up on stick welding the caster onto the jack foot. I'm much more familiar with tig welding so that is what I did. Ground off as much of the zinc coating (didn't look hot galvanized) to minimize fumes and let er rip. My welds were ugly because I struggled to get the torch in a good position. Rust-Oleum galvanization coating when done.

Went out and installed it. It seems to work much better even though I forgot to grease the bearings (the welding heat liquified the original grease). Alas, I have to take it back off because some bolts have worked their way loose (not the mounting bolts) and I can't get to them without removing the whole thing.

 

Ok, I went back out there and unmounted it and then replaced the missing nut from the rotation assembly. I put it back together and realized if you tighten those nuts down to much it won't rotate the leg up into travel position so I had to back them back out.

Regardless, it swings really well now. The wheel started out sideways and pushing from the back caused it to immediately rotate forward. Pushing from the front caused it to turn around.

Now we just hope that my welds hold.

 

Quick update. I highly recommend my method above. The caster wheel turns sooooooooooo easily now. Steering the trailer is a breeze.

There are a couple of downsides though.
1. When retracting or extending the leg, it likes to spin in place. This is common with jacks. The tough part is because the caster wheel spins independently of the foot (because bearings) you can't stop it by putting your foot against the wheel. You have to remember to brace against the foot which is higher up than the wheel.
2. The caster wheel is much narrower than the plastic jack wheels. If you leave pavement it is much easier to sink down into the dirt because of the decrease in surface area making contact with the ground.

Both of those are heavily outweighed by how much easier it is to move it around now.