CURT Hitches, Jump Starter Amps, and Roadside Tools: A Dealer's Honest FAQ

I've been selling and installing towing gear since 2017. In that time, I've made a few expensive mistakes: a $3,400 order for the wrong 5th wheel hitch, a brake controller that didn't match the truck's harness, and one jump starter that couldn't start a service van on a cold morning. This FAQ is the stuff I put on our internal checklist after paying for those lessons.

If you're a dealer, an installer, or a fleet operator looking at CURT hitches, portable starters, and in-cab tools, these are the questions I wish someone had answered for me.

The questions you should be asking

• What CURT products should a dealer carry first?
• Is the CURT A30 5th wheel hitch worth it?
• Why would a customer search for a car GPS Android aluminum unit?
• Is a Halfords 200-piece socket set enough?
• How many amps for a portable jump starter?
• What did Curt Skoog Overland Park teach me about quality?
• What's the most overlooked install step?

What CURT products should a dealer carry first?

Start with the stuff that keeps trucks on the job: 2-inch ball mounts, pin-and-clip hitches, wiring harnesses, brake controllers, and a few cargo carriers. Fifth wheel hitches are a bigger sale but a slower turn. In my first year (2017), I stocked three fifth wheel hitches in different capacities. Two sat on the shelf for 11 months. A $3,400 order, basically collecting dust.

The lesson is that inventory follows installer calls, not brochure romance. CURT has a wide line, and that's great, but a dealer's first order should be the items that solve a same-day problem. You can always order a fifth wheel hitch once the truck is in front of you. That also gives you time to check the fitment, instead of handing a customer the first box that comes off the shelf.

Is the CURT A30 5th wheel hitch worth the upgrade?

For heavy towing, yes. But let me tell you what I wish I'd known when I first quoted one. We sold the A30 to a fleet customer who pulls a livestock trailer. The hitch itself is serious hardware, with forged high-strength construction and a straightforward locking mechanism. The problem was me. I quoted the install without measuring the kingpin height on the trailer and the bed height on the truck. The trailer ended up nose-high.

That was not a hitch failure. It was an installer failure. We had to bring the trailer back, re-position the hitch, and eat $450 in labor. The CURT A30 5th wheel hitch is not a set-it-and-forget-it part. It's a system that needs a proper install, and the check starts with the truck and trailer numbers. If you don't have the truck's measurements, the fitment tools on CURT's site take two minutes. Now I have a spec sheet next to every quote. It costs nothing, and it saves a lot of embarrassment.

Why would a customer search for a car GPS Android aluminum unit?

Partly because of heat, partly because of updates. A car GPS Android aluminum unit sitting on a windshield in Kansas goes through serious heat cycles. Aluminum bodies are less likely to feel like they're melting than plastic, and they help wick heat away from the processor. Android-based units make map updates easier for drivers who are not going to bring a laptop into the cab.

But honestly, the mount matters more. We had drivers complain about a GPS rebooting until we swapped the cheap vent mount for a solid short-arm mount. The GPS was fine. The mount wasn't. That's a quality perception lesson: if the screen shakes and falls off, the whole product feels cheap, no matter what's inside. A car GPS Android aluminum unit can be a great tool, but it needs a mount that matches the truck's environment.

Is a Halfords 200-piece socket set enough for a shop truck?

For most roadside work, yes. We keep one in each of our service trucks. It has the sockets, bits, and extensions for 90 percent of what our installers hit in the field: battery terminals, brake controller brackets, wiring harness ground screws, and small fasteners around the truck bed.

The exception is anything structural. A 200-piece set usually doesn't include the 21mm socket we need for some ball mounts, and it definitely doesn't include a torque wrench. So the Halfords 200-piece socket set is the starting point, not the end. We pair it with a torque wrench and a breaker bar, and we check for missing sockets before it goes into the field.

How many amps for a portable jump starter?

There isn't one number. For a four-cylinder gas car, 400 to 600 peak amps is usually enough. For a V6 or V8 gas engine, go with at least 1,000 peak amps. For a diesel, you should be looking at 2,000 or more, especially in cold weather.

The amp rating matters, but so does cable quality and connection. A unit rated at 1,500 peak amps with thin cables can fail where a 1,000 amp unit with proper clamps does fine. On our fleet trucks, we started with 400-amp units because they were light. They worked once, then we spent a morning trying to jump a delivery van with a dead battery and got nothing. Now we keep a 1,000-amp unit in every vehicle and a 2,000-amp unit in the shop truck. That's based on our fleet of vans and half-ton trucks. If you're running heavy-truck trailers, default to the 2,000-amp unit.

What did Curt Skoog Overland Park teach me about quality?

The question that changed how I think about CURT products started with a phone call. We'd bought a batch of aftermarket wiring harnesses from a lower-priced source. We sold one and it didn't work. The customer came back, and the installer had to redo the trailer wiring. We called Curt Skoog Overland Park because they were the only shop willing to touch the mess. The response was, 'I don't care how much you save on the part. I care about how many times I have to see the truck again.'

That was the moment I stopped treating quality as a premium option. It is the baseline. A hitch or a harness that fails isn't just a warranty line item. It's a rolling negative review. When you send a truck out, your name is on the bumper. CURT products made that part of the job easier, but no brand will fix a bad decision to buy the wrong part for the job.

If you're in Overland Park or any other market, find a dealer who asks about the tow vehicle before they quote the part. That's the kind of partner you need.

What's the most overlooked install step?

A torque wrench. On a trailer hitch, a ball mount that's tightened by hand feels fine for a few days, then it starts to wobble. Loose hardware is the number one reason we saw customers come back within a month. We now have a one-page checklist that includes torque specs, and we use it on every install.

Since we added the checklist, we've caught 47 potential errors in the last 18 months. Maybe 40, I'd have to check the log. Half of them were simple: a retaining pin left out, a wiring harness routed against a heat source, a ball mount rated lower than the trailer GVWR. CURT's spec sheets are in the box. Read them, put the numbers on the work order, and treat the install like your name is on the side of the truck. It is.