How to Use RV Leveling Blocks

Interlock the blocks, build a ramp rather than a step, drive on until the whole tire is supported, and lay them wide rather than high on soft ground. That is the entire technique. Everything below is why each part matters.

Part of our leveling and chocks guide. If you are still deciding what to buy, the blocks roundup comes first.

Interlock them, always

The molded pegs on the top and recesses on the bottom exist so a stack behaves as one object. Press them together until they seat. A stack that is merely piled up can shuffle sideways as a tire rolls onto it, and the top block shooting out from under a moving wheel is the one genuinely alarming thing that happens in this category.

Build a ramp, not a wall

If you want two inches of lift, do not put two blocks in a neat pile. Lay one block flat in front, then the two-high stack behind it, so the tire climbs a stair. Otherwise you are asking the tire to climb a vertical face, which needs far more throttle than you want to use three feet from your own trailer.

This is also the single biggest cause of blocks cracking. A tire slamming into the edge of a block loads it at exactly the angle it was not designed for.

Support the whole tire

The tread needs to be entirely on the block, front to back and side to side. A tire with its shoulder hanging over an edge is loading the sidewall, and sidewalls are the part of a tire you protect.

Get out and look the first few times. The view from the driver's seat is not good enough to judge this, and there is no prize for guessing.

On soft ground, go wide

This is the rule that changes outcomes most. A two-high stack puts the trailer's weight through a footprint the size of a single block. On wet grass, it goes in.

Laying two blocks side by side and driving onto both spreads the same weight over twice the area. If you need lift as well as area, build the wide base first and stack on top of it. Wide-footprint block sets exist precisely for this, and they are covered in the roundup.

Pads under the jacks are a separate job

Once the trailer is level and unhitched, the stabilizer jacks and the tongue jack come down onto very small feet. Those want pads, not leveling blocks — a pad is wider and thinner, and it is designed to be squashed into the ground rather than driven onto.

The three things this job needs

Blocks for the tires, pads for the jack feet, and a bag so you leave with as many blocks as you arrived with.

Best for Most first trailers

Camco FasTen Leveling Blocks (10-pack)

The default first purchase for a travel trailer: interlocking blocks you stack into a ramp, cheap enough to buy two sets.

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Best for Stopping jacks sinking

Camco Stabilizing Jack Pads

Four squares of plastic that stop your stabilizer jacks burying themselves in a wet grass site overnight.

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Best for Not losing blocks

Camco Leveling Block Storage Bag

A bag, honestly. But the reason people lose leveling blocks is that they never had anywhere to put them.

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Getting them back

Drive off the blocks before you try to pick them up. Blocks under a loaded tire are wedged in place, and pulling at them is how people break a finger.

Then count them. The reason everyone eventually owns an odd number of leveling blocks is that a stack was left under a wheel in a site they have already driven out of. A bag with a known capacity makes the gap visible.