Using the tongue jack works fine for me. When I first bought the TH I tried to load my sidecar rig with the trailer fairly level, still hooked to the truck, no jacks down. Rig just barely scraped one of the hack mounting brackets. I screwed a 4 foot by 1 foot piece of 1/2 inch plywood down in the bike tracks. This raises the rear wheel enough that the offending bracket does not hit. Even with this in place I will raise the tongue a bit for the extra clearance.