A weight distributing hitch is a way to lighten your wallet and use junk engineering to counter one simple mistake - The person loading the trailer was too dumb to do it correctly.
Trailer sway is caused by too much weight (improperly loaded trailer) pushing down on the ball of the towing vehicle, creating a lever effect that lightens the front wheels of the towing vehicle. This makes the steering VERY twitchy, and the slightest crossbreeze can push against the side of the trailer and create a nasty sway that cannot be recovered from.
The "common assertion" is that you need a longer wheelbase vehicle to make towing safe. BS. The longer wheelbase means the "lever" is longer, and the front wheels do not get lightened by ball weight.
Equally BS is that a weight distributing hitch will cure this initial stupidity. The ball-and-trailer-tongue are a system. Think of them as a straight bar with a pivot in the middle. IF the trailer is loaded properly, that bar will be perfectly horizontal with the road underneath. All forces are parallel - Forward pulling. IF the trailer tongue is too heavy (more than 100-200 lbs) then the center of that bar (the ball) will be a lower point than the two ends... The lever effect. Now, pulling has to FIRST act to straighten the bar (lifting vertically) then it can pull forward. If you take the pull forces away (stopping) the ball will instantly try to sink, lifting the front wheels, and potentially trying to jackknife your trailer VERTICALLY.
A weight distributing hitch is a set of chains and arms that attempt to add strength to the ball-and-tongue system and keep them horizontal at all times. This is not a good idea, as it does NOT fix the underlying problem - You loaded your trailer incorrectly.
European Liberty CRDs are rated at 7000 lbs towing. I have pulled that with my US CRD... As they are the SAME EXACT VEHICLE, with no problems at all. I have also put 1200 lbs of tongue weight onto my CRD. I wouldn't suggest that, but my CRD put up with it. Yes, the front wheels were very light on the road.
Two things I would suggest you do: Forget the weight distributing hitch, it will never do anything for you for two reasons - You can't use it on a rental trailer (potential damage of the finish that you don't need to incur) and a car-hauler DOES properly balance the load by design.
The second suggestion: Don't tell the "whole truth" to U-haul when you are renting the trailer. The people at the rental shops are NOT capable of making an independent decision about allowing a rental even though we all know it is perfectly capable. They are ONLY allowed to use a computer program to decide FOR THEM if it is a "recommended combination" and if not... You get no rental. Their system is ONLY set up to allow rentals where the weight of the trailer does not exceed about 70% of the towing vehicle, and in many cases, their system only counts cylinders rather than vehicle capability.
So you may have to tell them that you have a V-6 gasser (YUCK) and you SHOULD tell them that you intend on towing a 67 VW Beetle. That car weighs almost nothing, and will get past their electronic gatekeepers perfectly.
They will not ask to see the towed vehicle, so once you have the trailer, you are free to set it up and go.
I can tell you all sorts of fun stories about tow dollies... The moral of them all however: They were invented by the devil, and should NEVER be used to tow anything. Tow dollies really suck the wet mango.
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