Project Zomboid Towing, Hitches, and Animal Trailers

Build 42 made animals a logistics problem, not a screenshot. A cow does not ride in the sedan trunk. You find a horsebox / livestock trailer or a lighter utility trailer, line up a hitch, and hope the physics engine is in a good mood. Players search “how to tow,” “animal trailer too heavy,” and “trailer flipped into the sky” because the radial menu is easy to miss and the failure modes are spectacular. This page covers vanilla hitching, trailer types, livestock loading, tire pressure, server flags, and the chunk-unload bug that turns a parked wagon into a missile. Driving basics stay on Vehicles. Mechanics XP stays on Vehicles and Mechanics. Animal care stays on Animal Care.

How to attach a trailer

1. Park straight. Hitch to hitch, same floor, within a few tiles (search is local—about ±6 squares in community tests).
2. Sit in the tow vehicle. Open the vehicle radial (V by default).
3. Choose Attach / attach vehicle. The menu labels (Rear) and (Front)—pick the end that matches the trailer tongue.
4. Drive slow. Wide turns. Grass and gravel punish livestock trailers harder than pavement.

If Attach never appears: you are too far, too angled, on different floors, or a multiplayer flag disabled towing. Hosts can set DisableTrailerTowing, DisableVehicleTowing, and DisableBurntTowing. Ask before you assume the radial is broken.

Burnt wrecks are a separate hitch case. Do not practice physics on a valued animal trailer using a burnt husk.

How to put animals in a livestock trailer in Build 42

Trailer types and mass

Community 42.19–42.20 numbers (confirm tooltips in your client):

Trailer	Typical mass	Role
Utility / covered / advert	~200	Light cargo; trunk often around 100 on the standard template
Horsebox / livestock	~500	Animals; cargo trunk is separate from animal slots

The white boxy livestock trailer has a reputation for feeling “too heavy” even empty. Before you file a bug: pump every tire on truck and trailer with a tire pump. Low pressure in Build 42 is a tow killer. Then test an empty trailer in a parking lot. If a taxi with healthy tires still stalls in second gear, try another trailer sprite—players reported one white variant behaving worse than the horse trailer.

Animals add mass. Three adult pigs in a 500-mass trailer is a different vehicle than an empty utility. Split the herd. Do not jump a curb at 40 mph; 42.8 notes even lowered livestock center of mass so they tip less, not never.

Loading livestock

• Chickens: pick up, walk to the trailer.
• Sheep, cows, and similar: right-click, attach a rope, lead to the rear doors.
• Stand at the back. Press V, Add to trailer, Add animal, pick the animal.

If the animal is not in the list, you are not close enough or the trailer is full. Do not reverse over the cow to “nudge” it in. That is how trailers go airborne.

Unload at the farm before you log off. A loaded trailer left hitched across a chunk unload is how you lose the season.

The chunk-unload hitch bug

A well-known vanilla issue (Build 41 and 42): if you leave two vehicles or a trailer attached and unload the chunk—distance or logout—the towed object can look detached when you return. Drive away, step out, and it snaps back, often into a wall or the sky.

Mitigation: detach before you walk out of simulation range. If you suspect the bug, attach and detach once on the spot before you commit a highway run. Never park a hitched trailer inside a building and log out.

42.8 also forced towed trailers to render while you are inside the car so you stop forgetting you still have a barn on a rope.

Towing another car

Same radial, same straight-line rule. Soft vehicles on grass need inflated tires even more. Use a truck, not a sports car. Best Vehicles ranks haul platforms; this page is the hitch.

Jump-starting and dead batteries are still the Vehicles chapter. A trailer will not charge a flat battery.

Multiplayer etiquette

Pin whether towing is enabled in the server title. A public lot full of abandoned livestock trailers is a physics minefield. Agree a detach-before-logout rule the same way you agree generator noise rules.

Kit to keep in the glovebox

• Tire pump
• Jack and lug wrench from Essential Tools
• Spare petrol—towing burns fuel faster
• Rope for animals
• A written reminder: detach

Towing is how western Echo Creek farms move a herd to a quieter pen. It is also how you yeet a horsebox through a second-story window. Straight hitch, pumped tires, empty test, then animals.