It’s all about the weight

On the way to our first ever destination we stopped in at Lonsdale Sand & Metal which operates a public weighbridge.

We have been concerned about the weight since we chose our van.

We arrived at a reasonably quiet time and were able to get the 3 basic measurements needed before a queue started to form behind us. Those came out as follows:

• Car, with caravan hitched: 2,550 kg
• Caravan (hitched): 3,100 kg
• Caravan (unhitched): 3,340 kg

Crunching the numbers

Our 2011 Touareg has a GVM of 2,910 kg. Adding myself, Megan and half a tank of diesel to the measured weight of 2,550 kg gives a value of 2,770 kg. This is safely below maximum weight by around 140 kg. Room for another person or two, or perhaps some water. This also includes both a full-sized spare for the car as well as its standard space-saver. At some point we will also lose the full size spare to the rear bar of the caravan. Hopefully we’ll replace that weight with a pair of folding e-bikes (looking at these). As yes we don’t know if we’ll continue to carry the space-saver.

The caravan has an ATM of 3,500 kg which posed no issues as loaded for this trip. It gave us 160 kg to spare and both water tanks filled.

Subtracting the hitched weight of the caravan from the unhitched weight gives us a tow ball download of 240 kg. This is under the 280 kg limit for the car, but at only 7.2% of the caravan weight is right on the lower end of the generally accepted range for optimum stability. Ideally, I’d like to see this up as close as possible to the full 280 kg allowed. This situation will get worse when car spare is moved to the rear bar of the caravan.

Combining the total weights of the car and caravan gives us 5,870 kg, which is handily under the Touareg’s 6,450 kg GCM.

So there we have it. All good and ready to roll. Let the fun begin!

Optimally, we’d also like to get individual front and rear axle loads for the Touareg. Maybe next time?