Towing laws

[Darkslider]

Bear in mind it's not just the 'weight' of the caravan you need to know, it's the Maximum Allowed Mass, i.e the most the caravan is allowed to weigh with all your stuff on board ready for a weekend. My little 2 berth caravan only 'weighs' 850kg or so, but has an MAM of 1060kg. Towing behind a Defender 90 with a 2400kg MAM gives me a combined MAM of 3460 so I'm just inside the 3500kg limit. However I couldn't use anything bigger as it would put me over, despite being arguably safer!

[R0G]

Darkslider said:

Bear in mind it's not just the 'weight' of the caravan you need to know, it's the Maximum Allowed Mass, i.e the most the caravan is allowed to weigh with all your stuff on board ready for a weekend. My little 2 berth caravan only 'weighs' 850kg or so, but has an MAM of 1060kg. Towing behind a Defender 90 with a 2400kg MAM gives me a combined MAM of 3460 so I'm just inside the 3500kg limit. However I couldn't use anything bigger as it would put me over, despite being arguably safer!

Bit late to the party here .... but correct bit of info that


For the B licence towing of a trailer over 750 KGS plated MAM there is one extra rule on top of the usual towing rules and that one extra rule is ...

... the vehicle plated GVW added to the trailer plated MAM or caravan MTPLM must not total more than 3500 KGS

The law about the trailer/caravan MAM/MTPLM not being more than the vehicle un-laden weight was revoked for all B licence towing drivers on 19/01/2013 but the DVLA in their wisdom have left the old rules on the internet to confuse drivers !

Caravans also have a separate piece of ADVICE due to their construction and how they act which is that at the time of towing it is RECOMMENDED that they do not weigh more than 85% of the towing vehicle
The un-laden weight of the vehicle and the MTPLM of the caravan are used for a worse case scenario to work this out but the reality is different as it is unlikely to ever be a worse case scenario

I hope that helps