Interior lights on Collin-Arndt Trailer

[spacytracy]

I just bought an 08’ Collin Arndt Encore Sport. A friend of mine has a similar trailer, just a year older.

Love the trailer so far. However, the weird thing is, I can only use the interior lights if the truck is in the ‘on’ position (key turned, but truck isn’t running). My friend said with hers, she just has to have her trailer plugged in to use them.

Hubby said that maybe the reason is so if you accidentally leave the lights on, you won’t drain the battery. However, it just seems really stupid to only be able to use them when the trucks on. For instance, tonight, trying to unload in the dark, after I shut the truck off and locked it, seemed kind of dumb.

Anyone else have this issue?

[mmeqcenter]

I may be wildly wrong but, I would assume this has more to do with your truck than the trailer. For instance, some vehicles allow you to charge a phone without the key in the ignition, others do not emit any power to charge a phone unless the key is turned to “on” or the engine is running.

Can you charge a cell phone with your truck off/key out of ignition?

[LCDR]

As posted above, it is specific to the towing vehicle and how the manufacturer chooses to wire it. On some vehicles the power wire in the trailer plug receptacle is always hot, and on the rest it is switched so it only receives power when the ignition switch is on.

If your tow vehicle has switched power and you would prefer it the other way, the vehicle wiring can be modified. Here is one cut and pasted solution from etrailer.com :

QUESTION
My F-250 doesn’t have constant 12v to the trailer plugin. How can I get a constant 12 volts?

REPLY
If you want to have constant 12V power to the trailer, even when the truck’s ignition is off, you can simply manually run a length of 10 gauge wiring from the 12V pin on the 7-way up to the battery’ positive post via a circuit breaker.

[spacytracy]

Amazing! And I feel very dumb now! lol!
Thank you so much for the insight and the info from etrailer!