Vehicle towing limits

Barleycorn said:

Just wondering about the justifications for vehicle towing limits. Last week I took a couple of steers in with my Freelander 2 and IW trailer. To be honest I was probably (!) close to the limit as it has a towing capacity of 2 tons.
However it went like a dream, I hardly noticed the trailer, plenty of pull and braking. It amazes me that I can legally tow 3 1/2 tons with a clapped out Series 3 Landrover, but only 2 tons with a modern Freelander. Who decides these capacities?

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Drillman said:

Series 3 are recommended at 2 ton according to the plate near the gear sticks.

Yes they will pull 3.5 ton but it’s a painfully slow job unless going downhill. And then the non servo assisted drum brakes makes it an interesting experience.

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Cab-over Pete said:

Dad used to, shall we say, chance things a little bit on the road. He saw laws as more of a general set of rough guidelines when it came to lights, gross weight, towing regulations etc.


He had a Peugeot pick up for a while. Great tool, but almost certainly NOT designed to pull a double deck of huge mule ewes wedged in so snug they can barely breathe.

Undeterred by such piffling legalities, off he went.

Now, the trailer had been used a bit, and the maintenance was likely not all it should have been. In fact the trailer brakes were pretty much non existent. But there was a job to do, and the fact that the Peugeot was waiting for a pair of new front brake calipers to be fitted didn’t seem to worry him too much.

He came around the double bends on Red Lane at a fair lick , it being a slight uphill drag so the full beans were definitely being given. After rounding the bend, a little bit of a twitch detectable from the rear of the steed, he noticed a parked car on his side of the road. No problem, with a bit of luck the rear indicator on the trailer was probably, maybe, hopefully working to let the following car know he was about to swerve out.

Then a bit of a concerning occurrence lent itself to the proceedings as a boy racer came around the next bend, which threw a big old spanner into Dads works.

Pretty soon, a decision would need to be made. Either slam the brakes on and stop (very unlikely ), swerve out and hope the boy racer could stop (or be hit head on) or ram straight into the parked car.

He initially chose option one. He pushed down with that right leg like his life depended on it (which it did rather, along with the lives of an increasingly alarmed youth speeding towards him and 34 fat girls in the trailer) and he yanked the handbrake up with all his might, but there didn’t seem to be a lot happening except for a screeching of the front offside tyre. At least one brake of the 8 had worked.

He quickly discounted option one and considered option two, but instantly weighed up the fact the maintenance programme had slipped a tad against the long winded process of claiming insurance. That would likely be fruitless, expensive and ultimately involve the boys in blue.

Option three didn’t appear too appealing either.

!

To the left of the parked car was a wide verge between the kerb and the houses on the left. He was a superb mental mathematician and in an instant he calculated that the pick up and trailer would squeeze perfectly between the parked car and the wall to the house garden. But he also realised that, it having been a very wet week, the verge might not be kind to a 2 wheel drive pick up, outrageously overweight and moderately under tyred.

Without so much as a bead of sweat forming on his brow, the laws of physics were challenged and calculations were made.

But option four still needed modification.

With the lightning reactions of a pee'd off cobra, he punched his foot down hard onto the accelerator. The faithful yoke , steering wheel wrenched left, mounted the verge and sped between the parked car and the wall , cutting a perfect pair of ruts but damaging nothing either side, nor the vehicle itself. In a roar of diesel smoke and raw power, the rear tyres spraying turf and stones in their wake, the whole outfit slipped through the gap effortlessly and, once through, with the steering wheel yanked right, the whole glorious rig rejoined the public road and sped off, leaving the following car marooned behind the parked car and the boy racer up on the verge on the other side of the road, contemplating a change of shorts.

It was, without doubt, one of the defining moments in Dads driving days. He and that old pick up had some good times, but that one beat them all.

It was an event that, even though lasting mere moments, made him chuckle for years.

Christ, I wish so much I had been in the passenger seat.

Dad, you were a f**king legend.

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Cab-over Pete said:

Dad used to, shall we say, chance things a little bit on the road. He saw laws as more of a general set of rough guidelines when it came to lights, gross weight, towing regulations etc.


He had a Peugeot pick up for a while. Great tool, but almost certainly NOT designed to pull a double deck of huge mule ewes wedged in so snug they can barely breathe.

Undeterred by such piffling legalities, off he went.

Now, the trailer had been used a bit, and the maintenance was likely not all it should have been. In fact the trailer brakes were pretty much non existent. But there was a job to do, and the fact that the Peugeot was waiting for a pair of new front brake calipers to be fitted didn’t seem to worry him too much.

He came around the double bends on Red Lane at a fair lick , it being a slight uphill drag so the full beans were definitely being given. After rounding the bend, a little bit of a twitch detectable from the rear of the steed, he noticed a parked car on his side of the road. No problem, with a bit of luck the rear indicator on the trailer was probably, maybe, hopefully working to let the following car know he was about to swerve out.

Then a bit of a concerning occurrence lent itself to the proceedings as a boy racer came around the next bend, which threw a big old spanner into Dads works.

Pretty soon, a decision would need to be made. Either slam the brakes on and stop (very unlikely ), swerve out and hope the boy racer could stop (or be hit head on) or ram straight into the parked car.

He initially chose option one. He pushed down with that right leg like his life depended on it (which it did rather, along with the lives of an increasingly alarmed youth speeding towards him and 34 fat girls in the trailer) and he yanked the handbrake up with all his might, but there didn’t seem to be a lot happening except for a screeching of the front offside tyre. At least one brake of the 8 had worked.

He quickly discounted option one and considered option two, but instantly weighed up the fact the maintenance programme had slipped a tad against the long winded process of claiming insurance. That would likely be fruitless, expensive and ultimately involve the boys in blue.

Option three didn’t appear too appealing either.

So, in true Dad style, he rapidly and calmycame up with option four.

To the left of the parked car was a wide verge between the kerb and the houses on the left. He was a superb mental mathematician and in an instant he calculated that the pick up and trailer would squeeze perfectly between the parked car and the wall to the house garden. But he also realised that, it having been a very wet week, the verge might not be kind to a 2 wheel drive pick up, outrageously overweight and moderately under tyred.

Without so much as a bead of sweat forming on his brow, the laws of physics were challenged and calculations were made.

But option four still needed modification.

With the lightning reactions of a pee'd off cobra, he punched his foot down hard onto the accelerator. The faithful yoke , steering wheel wrenched left, mounted the verge and sped between the parked car and the wall , cutting a perfect pair of ruts but damaging nothing either side, nor the vehicle itself. In a roar of diesel smoke and raw power, the rear tyres spraying turf and stones in their wake, the whole outfit slipped through the gap effortlessly and, once through, with the steering wheel yanked right, the whole glorious rig rejoined the public road and sped off, leaving the following car marooned behind the parked car and the boy racer up on the verge on the other side of the road, contemplating a change of shorts.

It was, without doubt, one of the defining moments in Dads driving days. He and that old pick up had some good times, but that one beat them all.

It was an event that, even though lasting mere moments, made him chuckle for years.

Christ, I wish so much I had been in the passenger seat.

Dad, you were a f**king legend.

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Cab-over Pete said:

I could honestly write a book about him.

From about the age of 11, me riding on the back of an old flat trailer load of round bale silage at midnight with a torch in my hand covered with a red rag to give a rear light, to driving the MF 165 we now have restored at 14 years old (“It’ll be fine, just don’t hit anyone”) on the road to cart silage, to getting pulled over by the rozzers for having no rear lights and a big trailed mower on the back (“I’ll just leave it in the next lay-by officer and collect it in the morning”), to losing a wheel off a trailer on the dual carriageway, to having a bloke bounce off his rear terra tyre and then cannon across the main road, to convincing his mate to tow an artic bale trailer home from a farm sale on the back of his Land Rover Series one, to bringing a Wiltshire Horn ram, content on destroying Uncle Jimmys Morris Minor van from the inside out with his horns (“It’s fine, we’ll hold a horn a piece, you steer, I’ll change gear”).

He was the best sort of Dad anyone could have wished for. He died aged 54 and I so wish I appreciated him more at the time. And now, as the years pass, I can see him more and more in my brother, who was his right hand man.

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Blue. said:

I thought it came down to chassis depth,early Isuzu dmax was 3t tow then it got changed in 13 to 3.5t.

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Blue. said:

I thought it came down to chassis depth,early Isuzu dmax was 3t tow then it got changed in 13 to 3.5t.

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Blue. said:

We had a new 504 pick up new in 1990,we had to stop the traffic to get a run up and out onto the main road with the cattle box in tow,we rode everywhere in the back of it,thought nothing of going ten miles in the back to young farmers etc

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