Owner's Guide
Contents+

Part 4 · Comfort, Lighting & Your Truck

Tow / Haul & trailer profiles

When there's a trailer on the hitch, xOverland turns your truck into a proper tow rig. It surfaces the fluid temperatures the factory cluster keeps buried, warns you out loud before your transmission cooks on a long grade, remembers every trailer you own (weight, tire PSI, brake gain), and walks you through a hitch-up checklist so nothing gets left behind in the driveway.

Where to find it: The live Tow / Haul panel opens from the Dashboard (your instrument-cluster home screen). Tap the TOW pill in the top-left corner of the Dashboard to open it. Trailer profiles themselves are created and edited under Header › gear icon › Settings › Vehicle › Trailers.

When you'll use it: Any time you're towing — a camper to the campground, a boat to the ramp, a car hauler across the state — and especially on long climbs, in summer heat, or with a heavy load, when transmission fluid temperature is the number that decides whether you have a good day or a tow truck's day.

The screen, part by part

The TOW pill (on the Dashboard)

  • A small rounded TOW badge with a thermometer icon appears in the top-left of the Dashboard whenever the truck is reporting tow-relevant data — either a live transmission-fluid temperature or a trailer detected on the hitch.
  • The thermometer glows amber when the truck senses a trailer connected, and blue when it's just showing you fluids. Tap it to open the full Tow / Haul panel.
  • If you're actively navigating a route, the pill steps aside so the turn-by-turn banner has that corner — the panel is still there, it just yields to guidance.

The Tow / Haul panel

Tap the pill and a large panel slides up over a dimmed Dashboard. Tap the dark area around it (or the X in the top-right) to close.

  • Transmission fluid (the hero number): A huge temperature readout dominates the top of the panel — this is the tow-critical number the stock gauges don't show you. The label underneath reminds you to keep it under 220 °F and tells you the temperature at which xOverland will speak up. The digits change color as things heat up: normal, then a caution color, then a hot/danger color as the temperature climbs.
  • Engine oil · Oil pressure · Coolant: A row of three secondary readouts beneath the hero number, each color-coded to its own safe range so a glance tells you whether everything's happy.
  • Trailer · Drive · Cylinders: A second row of status readouts. TRAILER shows "Hitched" (in amber) when the truck detects a trailer plugged in, or "None." DRIVE shows your current drivetrain (like 2H / 4H / 4L). CYLINDERS shows whether the engine is running on all eight cylinders or in fuel-saving mode — useful to watch when you're loaded, because a heavy pull keeps it in V8.
  • Trailer garage: Below a divider, this is where your saved trailers live (more on that below).
  • Coaching note: At the bottom, a short, plain-language reminder about managing trans temp on a grade — drop into Tow/Haul mode or a lower gear to hold RPM and let the converter lock, and back off before the temperature climbs past your alert threshold.

The trailer garage (inside the panel)

  • Trailer chips: A row of big, tappable chips — one labeled None plus one for each trailer profile you've saved. Tap a chip to tell xOverland what's on the hitch right now. The selected chip highlights in the accent color. Swipe the row sideways if you have more trailers than fit.
  • This trailer's numbers: Once a trailer is selected, four readouts appear — WEIGHT, LENGTH, TIRE PSI, and GAIN (brake-controller gain) — pulled straight from that trailer's saved profile. A dash means you left that field blank.
  • Pre-departure checklist button: A wide colored button showing your checklist progress (like "3/9"). It's amber while items remain and turns green with a check mark and "ready to tow" once everything's ticked. Tap it to open the walk-around.

The hitch-up walk-around

Tapping the checklist button opens a full walk-around overlay named for the trailer you selected:

  • Nine big rows, one per task, each tappable anywhere along the row to tick it off. The fixed list covers the walk-around every towing course teaches:
    • Coupler latched + pinned
    • Safety chains crossed
    • Breakaway cable attached
    • Tongue jack fully raised
    • Lights + turn signals checked
    • Trailer tire PSI checked
    • Load secured + balanced
    • Mirrors adjusted
    • Brake controller gain set
  • Checked items fill green with a check circle. When all nine are ticked, a green "All checked — ready to tow" banner appears at the bottom.
  • Reset: An amber "Reset" control in the header clears the checklist for a fresh walk-around next trip.

How to create a trailer profile

  1. From the Dashboard, tap the gear icon in the header to open Settings.
  2. Go to the Vehicle tab and scroll to the Trailers section.
  3. Tap Add trailer.
  4. Give it a Name (e.g. "Camper" or "Flatbed").
  5. Pick a type — Camper, Boat, Utility, Car hauler, or Cargo — by tapping one of the type chips. The type gives xOverland sensible fallback dimensions for its rig-safety checks.
  6. Fill in the numbers you know: Loaded weight (lb), Length (ft), Height (ft), Tire PSI, and Brake gain. Every field is optional except the name — leave anything blank you don't know.
  7. Tap Save trailer. It now appears in your garage and as a chip in the Tow / Haul panel.

To change one later, tap Edit next to it; to remove it, tap the red trash icon.

How to set up before a tow

  1. Hook up and plug in the trailer.
  2. On the Dashboard, tap the TOW pill to open Tow / Haul.
  3. In the trailer garage, tap the chip for the trailer you're pulling. Its weight, PSI, and brake gain appear so you can dial your brake controller to match.
  4. Tap the pre-departure checklist button and work down the nine rows as you do your physical walk-around, tapping each one as you confirm it.
  5. When the banner turns green, you're set. Close the panel and drive.

Your checklist progress is saved per trailer — if you get interrupted and come back, or even restart the truck, your ticks are still there. Tap Reset to start clean for the next trip.

How to watch temps on a climb

  1. As you start a long grade, tap the TOW pill to keep the fluids in view.
  2. Watch the big transmission fluid number. If it starts climbing, drop into Tow/Haul mode or a lower gear to hold RPM and let the torque converter lock.
  3. If it crosses your alert threshold, xOverland will say so out loud — but the panel lets you see it coming and back off first.

What you need

Most of the Tow / Haul telemetry — transmission fluid temp, engine oil temp, oil pressure, drivetrain, cylinder mode, and trailer-connected detection — is read from your truck's data network through the installed aftermarket head unit's CAN connection. When that connection is live, the numbers are real and update as you drive. Coolant comes from a paired OBD-II adapter (paired in the head unit's Bluetooth settings). Until those hardware sources are connected, the readouts show dashes ("—") rather than made-up numbers, and the TOW pill only appears once there's genuine tow data to show.

Trailer profiles and the hitch-up checklist, on the other hand, work entirely on their own — no adapters, no subscriptions. You can build your whole trailer garage and run the walk-around checklist with nothing plugged in.

The spoken transmission-temperature alert requires voice alerts to be turned on (Settings › Alerts) and a live CAN connection to read the temperature.

Tips & good to know

  • Set your alert threshold. In Settings › Alerts, the "Transmission temp" row lets you turn the spoken warning on or off and choose the temperature (adjustable from 210 °F to 280 °F; it ships at 240 °F). The panel always shows you the current threshold so you know exactly when it'll speak.
  • It won't nag. The alert speaks once when you cross the line, then stays quiet until the fluid has cooled a few degrees back down — so a temperature hovering right at the edge won't announce itself over and over.
  • Height matters more than you'd think. The Height you enter for a trailer feeds xOverland's rig-safe route checking — when you're towing, the on-road planner uses your combined rig height (and weight and length) to flag low bridges and posted limits. A tall camper is exactly what busts a low overpass, so fill this in if you know it.
  • Blank fields fall back sensibly. If you leave length or height blank, the app estimates from the trailer type rather than assuming zero — so its clearance and length checks still mean something.
  • "None" is a real choice. Tap the None chip whenever you drop the trailer, so the app knows you're back to just the truck and stops applying trailer dimensions to your routes.
  • Trailer detection depends on your truck's wiring. The "Hitched / None" status reads a signal off the truck's network; if your trailer or connector doesn't report it, the status may stay "None" even when hitched — just select the trailer chip manually, and everything else still works.
  • The panel is a glove-box view. You pick and check trailers here on the touchscreen while you're at the truck; you build and edit their numbers in Settings, where the keyboard lives.