Trailer sitting nose high - how much is too much?

I'd fix it before Sunday, not because of the angle itself but because of what it usally means. Nose-up almost always means the tongue weight is light, and light tongue weight is what gets a trailer swaying at highway speed. I learned this the hard way hauling a loaded 5x8 utility behind my Tacoma to a cabin a few years back. Loaded it lazy, heavy stuff toward the back, and around 65 mph in a crosswind the whole rig started fishtailing bad enough that I white-knuckled it to the next exit and repacked the trailer on the shoulder. Never made that mistake again.

You can actually check it without guessing. There's a bathroom scale trick: back the trailer onto level ground, put a short board and a block on the scale so the coupler can rest on it at hitch height, lower the tongue onto that setup, and read what the tongue weighs. You want the tongue pushing down a noticable amount, roughly a tenth of the total trailer weight is the number people usually throw around. If it reads almost nothing, that's your problem. For a rented cargo trailer the fix is usually free, just shift the load. Put the heavy stuff forward, right over or slightly ahead of the axle, and the squat on your truck will actually tell you when you've got it right. The truck sitting a bit lower with the trailer level is the correct look, not the one your buddy called fine.

Rented trailers are a diferent beast than what folks are describing with thier own setups. I pulled a rented 5x8 cargo from Phoenix up to Portland behind an F-150 a few years back and it sat nose-up the whole trip, beacuse rental coupler height never seems to match your receiver exactly. Nothing I could do about it short of buying a drop hitch for one move, and it towed fine at highway speed across three states. A midsize squatting a little under a tiny box trailer is just the receiver doing its job too, so I woud not panic about the look of it. What I would actually do is control what you can control. Load the trailer with the heavy stuff over the axle and toward the front wall, keep the total under the load limit printed on the rental, and don't stack everything at the back just because it's easier to slide in last.

If you want a real number instead of eyeballing it, a bathroom scale on a level driveway under the coupler, with a board on top to get it up to hitch height, gives you a rough reading. Most moving guides suggest roughly a tenth of the loaded trailer weight on the tongue, so you can compare what the scale says against that and shift cargo accordingly.

One habit that served me well on long hauls: stop at the first gas station after an hour on the interstate and feel the trailer sides near the front. Warm hubs are normal, but if the truck feels twitchy or the trailer seems to be wandering behind you, shift weight forward before getting back on.

Whatever you do with the load, go walk around that rental before you leave. I drive a box truck for a living and we check tire pressure and lug nuts on anything that sat in a yard, because rentals sit for months and flat spots and loose wheels are way more common than people think. I found a lug half backed off on a rental once, never again. Also figure out where the breakaway cable and chains go before Sunday morning, fumbling with that stuff in a parking lot with a loaded trailer is no fun.

Gotta push back on the idea that the truck squatting tells you when you've got it right. Squat just means weight is on the ball, not that the amount is correct. My cousin bottomed out his bump stops doing exactly that, chasing a level trailer with a load shoved too far forward, and the front end went so light steering felt wierd the whole drive. An empty rental cargo trailer weighs almost nothing, so a little squat could mean way too much tongue weight for a midsize, not too little. The scale method is the only part of that advice I'd trust. Forget the look, get an actual number.

That scale trick is the real answer here. I did the same thing with a rented cargo trailer on a move from Ohio to Texas, put a scrap 2x6 on the bathroom scale with a block under the far end so the coupler sat at hitch height, and the tongue came in around 90 lbs. Nudged a couple totes forward and it went up to where I wanted it. Took ten minutes and made the whole drive feel planted instead of floaty. Way better than eyeballing it and hoping.