3300John:
hiya all this towing thing is just to hard to follow getting.i have a 3.5 ton plant trailer.i only carry 2 motorbikes
on it to shows.well used to, my motorhome is 3.5 ton and 5 ton train. because the trailer is capable of 3.5 ton gross
vosa now say you might load the trailer to max meaning 3.5 ton van + 3.5 ton trailer 7 ton. so now i can’t even pull
my empty trailer because i MIGHT put too much load on it. so i can have a flimsy tin can trailer from B&Q
with one motor bike on thats safer.
what crap
John
3300John:
hiya all this towing thing is just to hard to follow getting.i have a 3.5 ton plant trailer.i only carry 2 motorbikes
on it to shows.well used to, my motorhome is 3.5 ton and 5 ton train. because the trailer is capable of 3.5 ton gross
vosa now say you might load the trailer to max meaning 3.5 ton van + 3.5 ton trailer 7 ton. so now i can’t even pull
my empty trailer because i MIGHT put too much load on it. so i can have a flimsy tin can trailer from B&Q
with one motor bike on thats safer.
what crap
John
Just take the plate off and get one that says 1 tonne or what ever - sorted
limeyphil:
a friend of mine has a 3.5 ton transit car transporter. we were discusing the possibility of him putting a hydraulic lift on the back so he can tow an extra car.
he recons it will then need to be fitted with a tacho, but i’m not convinced. he won’t be towing a trailer, he’ll be carrying one car, and lifting the front wheels of another.
he charges £1.00 per mile, so this way it’ll be £2.00 per mile, not bad considering what some charge for a 44 ton truck.
I know a few who have had trany car transportes and towing a trailer behind
They where stopped by VOSA and told they needed taco machines
Dont know if they are supposed to have an opporators licence though
Some transits are over 3.5 tonnes GVW hence will need tachos
but you’d still need a tacho with a van under 3.5t if you put a trailer on it that would take the combination of gross weights over 3.5t
3300John:
hiya all this towing thing is just to hard to follow getting.i have a 3.5 ton plant trailer.i only carry 2 motorbikes
on it to shows.well used to, my motorhome is 3.5 ton and 5 ton train. because the trailer is capable of 3.5 ton gross
vosa now say you might load the trailer to max meaning 3.5 ton van + 3.5 ton trailer 7 ton. so now i can’t even pull
my empty trailer because i MIGHT put too much load on it. so i can have a flimsy tin can trailer from B&Q
with one motor bike on thats safer.
what crap
John
If the gross weight is stamped on the trailer manufacturers plate, remove it. They can only check your gross weight for the combination on the scales then, and as long as your within the permited train weight jobs a good un .
3300John:
hiya all this towing thing is just to hard to follow getting.i have a 3.5 ton plant trailer.i only carry 2 motorbikes
on it to shows.well used to, my motorhome is 3.5 ton and 5 ton train. because the trailer is capable of 3.5 ton gross
vosa now say you might load the trailer to max meaning 3.5 ton van + 3.5 ton trailer 7 ton. so now i can’t even pull
my empty trailer because i MIGHT put too much load on it. so i can have a flimsy tin can trailer from B&Q
with one motor bike on thats safer.
what crap
John
Yep, it’s a chew on for sure. This is just because VOSA go off Gross weights, not actual laden weights.
Similar to running an artic solo on a class 2 license - they’ll say you need a class 1 because it could pull a trailer, even though it isn’t pulling a trailer.
Do what’s said above, take the plate off and stick a new one on with 1.5 ton gross on it.
3300John:
hiya all this towing thing is just to hard to follow getting.i have a 3.5 ton plant trailer.i only carry 2 motorbikes
on it to shows.well used to, my motorhome is 3.5 ton and 5 ton train. because the trailer is capable of 3.5 ton gross
vosa now say you might load the trailer to max meaning 3.5 ton van + 3.5 ton trailer 7 ton. so now i can’t even pull
my empty trailer because i MIGHT put too much load on it. so i can have a flimsy tin can trailer from B&Q
with one motor bike on thats safer.
what crap
John
Yep, it’s a chew on for sure. This is just because VOSA go off Gross weights, not actual laden weights.
Similar to running an artic solo on a class 2 license - they’ll say you need a class 1 because it could pull a trailer, even though it isn’t pulling a trailer.
Do what’s said above, take the plate off and stick a new one on with 1.5 ton gross on it.
but you only need a class 2 / C to drive an artic solo because it’s a class 2 / C vehicle
limeyphil:
so it looks like he might need a tacho. so can he use a log book instead.
i might put the A frame idea to him, due to the axle weight problem.
Towing a car on an A frame is illegal unless the towed car is properly converted so that it is fully braked.
You put a car on an A frame, it becomes a trailer. Any trailer over 750kgs must be fully braked (that means all wheels must be braked). The campervan brigade have their towed cars modified with brake connections, so they can tow them.
That is the downside of an A frame or Ambulance. The first one I used was made out of a trolley jack
It had a 50mm ball coupling where the handle went, and an axle off a small Rotavator welded to it, then two chains that hooked back onto themselves. Amazingly it worked
3300John:
hiya all this towing thing is just to hard to follow getting.i have a 3.5 ton plant trailer.i only carry 2 motorbikes
on it to shows.well used to, my motorhome is 3.5 ton and 5 ton train. because the trailer is capable of 3.5 ton gross
vosa now say you might load the trailer to max meaning 3.5 ton van + 3.5 ton trailer 7 ton. so now i can’t even pull
my empty trailer because i MIGHT put too much load on it. so i can have a flimsy tin can trailer from B&Q
with one motor bike on thats safer.
what crap
John
Yep, it’s a chew on for sure. This is just because VOSA go off Gross weights, not actual laden weights.
If vosa go off gross weights then how can you pull a trailer designed for 44ton with a down rated unit say at 32t■■?
3300John:
vosa now say you might load the trailer to max meaning 3.5 ton van + 3.5 ton trailer 7 ton. so now i can’t even pull
my empty trailer because i MIGHT put too much load on it.
Where do VOSA say that because AFAIK it’s nonsense. Were you told this in person or do you have a link to somewhere that confirms it?
cieranc:
Similar to running an artic solo on a class 2 license - they’ll say you need a class 1 because it could pull a trailer, even though it isn’t pulling a trailer.
If they say that to you then you need to call them some rude names because they’re lying.
Based on that logic any rigid truck with a drawbar coupling can not be driven by someone who doesn’t have C+E and we all know that is nonsense.
3300John:
vosa now say you might load the trailer to max meaning 3.5 ton van + 3.5 ton trailer 7 ton. so now i can’t even pull
my empty trailer because i MIGHT put too much load on it.
Where do VOSA say that because AFAIK it’s nonsense. Were you told this in person or do you have a link to somewhere that confirms it?
Paul
that’s what i thought
from what i can find, the only time the MAM of the trailer makes any difference is when you don’t have an E entitlement on your licence.
one of our drivers was stopped on the scottish borders and delayed for over two hours because our axel weights add up to 56 t
our tm tried to explain to scottish plod that we could only run at 44t but he wouldn’t have it kept sayin we were runnin illegal till the tm phoned some bod at vosa and got him to explain in simplese to the plod that yes we could run technically at 56t and not have an overweight axel but as 44 was the max allowed that is all we could run at and the vehicle combo was ok(8 legger and drag) what a waste of time
I did have a copy of an email from VOSA stating that they were concerned with actual weights and where such a combination was stopped for examination, it should be weighed.
Not sure if Barlows who originally hosted it would be able to shed any further light on it.
So you can tow a trailer rated to 3.5t as long as you only load it to weigh in total what your tow vehicle is capable of towing you are fine. In the case of the 3.5t motorhome with a 5t train that would be give a payload of about 900kg after taking away the trailer weight.
3300John:
vosa now say you might load the trailer to max meaning 3.5 ton van + 3.5 ton trailer 7 ton. so now i can’t even pull
my empty trailer because i MIGHT put too much load on it.
Where do VOSA say that because AFAIK it’s nonsense. Were you told this in person or do you have a link to somewhere that confirms it?
Paul
that’s what i thought
from what i can find, the only time the MAM of the trailer makes any difference is when you don’t have an E entitlement on your licence.
There was a guy on a car forum I’m on was told to leave his trailer behind in a layby because it exceeded the train weight of his car, he even told the plod he was only moving the empty trailer to his garage but was told he would be overweight if it was loaded so he couldn’t pull it. Now I just read this so can’t confirm any of it but it does seem a bit crazy to me. On a similar note my brother was parked up a few years ago with a 6 1/4 tonne Isuzu pulling a 3.5 tonne trailer cos the cop said he needed a H.G.V. licence to drive it as it was 9 tonne took a lot of phone calls before he was allowed to leave.
3300John:
vosa now say you might load the trailer to max meaning 3.5 ton van + 3.5 ton trailer 7 ton. so now i can’t even pull
my empty trailer because i MIGHT put too much load on it.
Where do VOSA say that because AFAIK it’s nonsense. Were you told this in person or do you have a link to somewhere that confirms it?
Paul
that’s what i thought
from what i can find, the only time the MAM of the trailer makes any difference is when you don’t have an E entitlement on your licence.
There was a guy on a car forum I’m on was told to leave his trailer behind in a layby because it exceeded the train weight of his car, he even told the plod he was only moving the empty trailer to his garage but was told he would be overweight if it was loaded so he couldn’t pull it. Now I just read this so can’t confirm any of it but it does seem a bit crazy to me. On a similar note my brother was parked up a few years ago with a 6 1/4 tonne Isuzu pulling a 3.5 tonne trailer cos the cop said he needed a H.G.V. licence to drive it as it was 9 tonne took a lot of phone calls before he was allowed to leave.
but was the bloke who told him to leave in the right?
one of my mates (B only) was stopped in a vito pulling a small caravan, the copper who had attitude said you can’t tow that, you can only tow tow a small garden type trailer now my mate didn’t know at the time that he was actually legal so never argued. the caravan had to be recovered and stored. mate looks into it gets a solicitor and finds out he’s legal, it went to court where the copper didn’t turn up or the case was dropped at the last minute, something like that anyway. he was told he’d have to sue or something along them lines to recover his lost caravan which had been scrapped very soon after it was recovered due to what would’ve been a lot of storage costs
dazcapri:
There was a guy on a car forum I’m on was told to leave his trailer behind in a layby because it exceeded the train weight of his car, he even told the plod he was only moving the empty trailer to his garage but was told he would be overweight if it was loaded so he couldn’t pull it.
The plod was talking nonsense. Think about it… My artic bulker semi trailer is plated at 37500kg gross. My 6x2 tractor unit weighs around 7500kg. So if I loaded my trailer up to it’s maximum permissible weight of 37500kg my total gross weight would be 45000kg which as I’m sure we all know is 1000kg over the GTW of a 6 axle rig. I can’t see any plod trying to tell me I had to leave that trailer in a layby because I might just load it up to the maximum capacity…
dazcapri:
There was a guy on a car forum I’m on was told to leave his trailer behind in a layby because it exceeded the train weight of his car, he even told the plod he was only moving the empty trailer to his garage but was told he would be overweight if it was loaded so he couldn’t pull it.
The plod was talking nonsense. Think about it… My artic bulker semi trailer is plated at 37500kg gross. My 6x2 tractor unit weighs around 7500kg. So if I loaded my trailer up to it’s maximum permissible weight of 37500kg my total gross weight would be 45000kg which as I’m sure we all know is 1000kg over the GTW of a 6 axle rig. I can’t see any plod trying to tell me I had to leave that trailer in a layby because I might just load it up to the maximum capacity…
HTH,
Paul
Not sure how it translates to HGVs but certainly for cars and vans you cant pull a trailer thats plated over the maximum plated towing weight of the tow vehicle, not sure artics have a plated towing weight as such, but nearly all light commercialls have a maximum trailer weight on the plate this is normally allows slightly more then the gross train weight as in allot of cases the tow vehcile can’t be fully laiden when towing at its maximum trailer weight as this would exceed the gross train weight if that makes sence,
I.e. Nissan navara these are approximate and rounded figures but they give you the idea
Maximum gross trailer weight 2700kg
Gross weight or vehicle 3200kg
Maximum train weight 5500Kg
as you can see the trailer GW and the GVW add up to more then the train weight, this is acceptable providing that the that the actally weight of the combination as it would show on a weigh bridge does not exceed the max train weight
The obvious answer is to get the trailer down plated
i’m a little curious as to where people get there vehicle weights from?
last time i weighed a car, it was a kia sedona. it was less than 2 tons.
a ford granada mk2 was 1.2 tons, and a mk3 ■■■■■■ was 750 kilos, and that was an average car.
my 7.5 ton ford cargo tipper weighed less than 4 tons.
so why do people think that average cars weigh 1.5 to 2 tons?
.
now my mate didn’t know at the time that he was actually legal so never argued. the caravan had to be recovered and stored. mate looks into it gets a solicitor and finds out he’s legal, it went to court where the copper didn’t turn up or the case was dropped at the last minute, something like that anyway. he was told he’d have to sue or something along them lines to recover his lost caravan which had been scrapped very soon after it was recovered due to what would’ve been a lot of storage costs