It's always been kind of a wonder to me how little hardware there is holding the underside of the ball, but the way I do it I don't think there's any unacceptable strain on those parts. Keeping those parts adjusted as they wear is a whole other topic.
Only two points I can think of to address your concerns.
One is that many cases of the hitch coming off the ball result from it not being latched in properly. The most common cause is that some hitch (trailer-end) designs allow the latch to fall into a position that "looks right" when the pawl that should be under the ball has actually been forced closed OVER the ball (usually if the hitch is too far ahead of the center of the ball when lowered) so that it winds up resting on top, and can not help in holding the hitch to the ball when the trailer rocks to the rear. I had that experience once early on in my towing career
Hence the caution that has led me to test the hitch the way I do. I don't jack it high. I let the jack up enough to make sure it's resting on the ball, then latch it down and secure it with a pin. I then jack it back up enough to take the weight back off the ball (there's a slight pause in the rise of the hitch at that point) and then jack it beyond that point JUST enough to see that it's lifting the truck. Then raise the jack to traveling height.
And I'm not afraid of sticking my finger up inside to make sure the pawl is UNDER the ball. Wiping the grease off my finger is a small price to pay for knowing my hitch will hold.
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Today's Featured Article - An Old-Time Tractor Demonstration - by Kim Pratt. Sam was born in rural Kansas in 1926. His dad was a hard-working farmer and the children worked hard everyday to help ends meet. In the rural area he grew up in, the highlight of the week was Saturday when many people took a break from their work to go to town. It was on one such Saturday in the early 1940's when Sam was 16 years old that he ended up in Dennison, Kansas to watch a demonstration of a new tractor being put on by a local dealer. It was an Allis-Chalmers tractor dealership,
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