First Caravan? Things to consider

Your new caravan will be a compromise on weight, size, storage and price. It will also need to be within the plated weight capacity of your current tow vehicle. You cant simply grab any van regardless of size and plonk it on the tow bar of any car. There are a lot of points to understand and check off. Weight is the caravaners arch nemesis

The following article will add to the knowledge base required to make an informed, safe and appropriate decision for your new or ‘new to you’ caravan

The very first thing you need to do is build up a working understanding all the different weight specs that apply to your car, and what you can tow with your car. This is vital, and you need to know it

A working understanding of ATM (Aggregate Trailer Mass), GVM (Gross Vehicle Mass), GCM (Gross Combined Mass), GTM (Gross Trailer Mass), Tare, Payload, TBM (Tow Ball Mass) is the most important consideration with what type of caravan you can short list. Your life, the lives of your family and other road users, and your investment depend on it. These weight considerations are well documented across a vast sea of credible online resources. Google will point you in the right direction … but do that first.

You should not rely on a car or caravan salesman to guide you with this stuff. Anyone who has a vested financial interested in you making a purchase isn’t the best balanced source of info. Ultimately its your responsibility to know this stuff and if it all goes pear shaped you can be sure the saleman’s arse will be well and truly covered and you’ll be left standing on your own, scratching your head if your lucky.

Single car towing accidents are common and overweight, inappropriate tow vehicle, poor tow setup and poor loading are key factors in all single car towing accident.

By all means get some guidance from people you know and trust, but that guidance must be with the aim of helping you to understand and not to make the decisions for you. The weight specs are crucial for the safety of your family, the safety of other road users, the longevity of your vehicle and caravan, and your legal and insurance obligations.  

Weights applicable to your vehicle will ultimately decide what you can and cant tow so get to know that before you start looking at specific caravans.   Give yourself plenty of weight margins otherwise you will absolutely go over, there is nothing surer. If it the second hand market youll be shopping in, and lets face it youll get more for your dollar, then make sure you get a current weight bridge weight of your potential purchase to make sure its within its legal weight parameters.

Government sponsored weight checks through police and registration authorities are very likely to be on the increase rather than decrease. Its likely at some point in the future caravans will find themselves diverted into truck weigh stations resulting in fines and unroadworthy certificates issued.

It will be a pretty expensive holiday if you need to buy a new car capable of towing the caravan whilst your caravan sits in the weigh site until you return. To be honest I have zero sympathy for anyone caught in this dilemma. Weights have been had a ‘blind eye’ approached forever and because of that people have been flaunting the laws and putting other people like my family at risk for far too long.

These same people that over load with impunity don’t speed because they know the authorities are actively watching speedsters, they overload at will because they believe the authorities aren’t watching for that. When they get caught …… good

To put all this vehicle weight stuff into perspective, Ill use a 2018 Toyota Landcruiser (LC) Sahara as an example. The Toyota LC is widely touted as the ultimate tow vehicle and the Sahara is worth a tidy $115,000. The LC has a 3350 gvm and a 2740 kerb mass straight out of the Toyota factory; the difference between those two weights is the payload, 610kg.

Subtract the following common standard additions from that 610kg total carrying capacity

140kg Mum and Dad (not my mum and dad, they’re lightweights)
120kg 138ltrs diesel (diesel is actually 15% lighter than water)
350kg TBM. 3.5t is the tow capacity and TBM is around 10%

To many peoples horror those 3 bare necessities add up to 610kg, which is the total payload of a brand new ex-factory 2018 Toyota LC.  This is not an illusion or crazy maths mumbo jumbo, its cold hard real world fact and this is the limitation your least likely to hear about when you buy the LC from the dealership.

With just these three minimum items the LC has reached the rated GVM and its payload has max’d out.   At this point a banana and ham sandwich will throw it over its plated legal capacities.   The Toyota LC has 7 seats and we’ve only put mum and dad in the car. Add another 5 people or a couple of kids and all their crap, start adding a bull bar, winch, roof rack, tinnie, aggressive tyres, tow bar, weight distribution hitch, heavy duty suspension, rear cargo drawers, Engel fridge, jerry cans, water, tool box, dog, lunch or anything else you thought you could just throw into that car.  All these things listed would put the LC at least another 610kg or more than double its rated payload not only over that payload, but also it’s rated legal and insured GVM.

Once you know your weight limitations only then can you start the process of searching for new of caravan. Caravanning is all about a compromise on weight, space, storage, etc etc so start culling, and start thinking minimalist because during your research on potential vans its generally a better option to make even more compromises and get the smallest and lightest van that will mostly fit your total overall needs.

Just like the bursting of the illusion bubble of what we can carry and tow with a our tow vehicle, its time to do the same illusion bubble bursting to what we can carry in the caravan. In regards to the car the weight issue is GVM, with a van its the vans ATM

The combined weight of all the personal stuff that we all pile into our caravans will add up very very quickly and to top that off a caravans plated payload does not exclude tank water, or gas or grey water which will straight up rob around 260kg+ from your payload capacity. Every single item including the most insignificant thing that goes through the caravans door and doesn’t come out, will subtract from the vans payload capacity; tea spoons, TV, CD’s, hats, phone chargers, double adapters, tea towels, detergent, BBQ tongs etc etc. EVERYTHING adds up.

The vans charged hot water system, plumbing and so called empty water tanks can also hide anything upwards of 30kg of extra unaccounted for water.    These weights are factory plated weights, and don’t include the anything and everything in the way of additions or modifications or accessories of your own that you or the previous owners have added after the caravan was factory delivered. Its not uncommon for the new owners of second hand vans to discover that empty, their new caravan is over its rated weight. Look for extra water tanks, tool boxes, bike racks, in fact anything not obviously ex-factory. Second hand caravans are notorious for having a lot of extra weight hidden in accessories and modifications.

To put this into perspective many of the run of the mill caravan manufacturers have standardised plated payload weights. For example Jayco has identical payloads for their entire range. Regardless of model or overall size every single Jayco twin axle shower model caravan has a payload of 475kg. Take away the 210kg of water and gas, then pots pans, crockery, cutlery, BBQ, tools, bedding, clothing, toiletries, fridge contents, pantry contents, TV, Xbox, laptop, bike racks, bikes, hoses, power leads, sullage pipes, kettle, toaster, tea towels, spoons, tooth pics, tissues, toilet paper etc etc etc and we can see that the same weight issues we encountered with out tow vehicle are now also rapidly developing in the caravan.

We cant swap stuff out of the caravan and into the car, because our LC is already over its limits because Dad ate too much breakfast.

If so far all this weight mumbo jumbo this seems like a horrible and impossible scenario of a juggling act nightmare, good you’ve being paying attention and this is precisely that, a compromise nightmare and too many inconsiderate people don’t pay heed to this, and think it doesn’t apply to them.

Search YouTube for “caravan roll overs” or caravan accidents” and you’ll see repeatedly how ignorance or avoidance of all this weight stuff plays out in the real world. My advice is do not under any circumstances push either yourself, your vehicle or your caravan to their limits. Err on the side of caution, put safety first and give yourself plenty of buffers at every opportunity

Now that your a weight expert its time to move on. In conjunction with your known weight limits, the amount of beds you’ll be needing will give you the best indication of the size of the van you’ll be limited to.    Bathrooms, twin axles, independent suspension, off road chassis all add significant weight and push the van toward or over your limits.

If you don’t think you’ll be going off road maybe the added weight of these items is unnecessary. Some tourers can be a little low to the ground, but a cheap swap of the exisiting axles to under the springs will generally fix that. Independent offroad suspension added almost 200kg to our caravans weight; a lot if you don’t intend pushing the van to its limits. For the most part leaf spring suspension will take all dirt roads in its stride without the necessity for the very heavy expensive alternative.

Tandem axle vans do tow very well and distribute weight better but they are heavier.  Generally tandem axle vans start at around the 17ft long mark and this is because of the axle load ratings require a second axle to share the load of an 18ft van.

Once you have narrowed down your requirements and potential size particularly weight hiring a similar sized and layout van for a week or two of campsite hopping will give you a great opportunity to put your research and theory into practice, and also give you a great idea of what lies ahead. Don’t just plonk somewhere for a week, use the time to tow as much as you can.

Everything in your tiny new home will resemble stuff in the real world, but will on some level be different; from a little different, to very very different. The fridge will be much smaller and if its a 3 way it will get hot in order to get cold, and cannot be opened continually like a house fridge . The stove will be smaller and barely fit two pots and the same time. The sink is tiny and can drain slowly. Rangehoods are often useless, the shower smaller with only 15 minutes or so of hot water, and the toilet has a large hole that you can see your poop through. Everything caravanning is a compromise, but we promise you’ll quickly adapt, get uses to it and soon realise that all the extra crap you left at home is just that …. extra crap you can do without.

Some caravan beds are inner spring and some are foam. Often the foam is uncomfortable, and sometimes the inner spring worse. There are a lot of windows, hatches inside and out, doors, drawers and roof vents to open. Once they are open they all need to be closed for weather and travel.

Caravan TV antennas are a compromise, some work and some simply don’t. You could be getting scribble yet the next door neighbour is watching your favourite program.

With the upwardly spiralling cost of caravans getting your first caravan purchase right shouldn’t be left to chance. With the resources and opportunities to get it right there are no reasons nor excuses for getting it wrong.

John Cadogan from AutoExpertTV on YouTube puts a humorous and entertaining Aussie twist on the issue of weights and limits applicable to towing