Caravans stopped and weighed.

iana · Guru

Caravans stopped and weighed.

outlaw40 · Guru

brave man asking that one iana hope you have popcorn at the ready .this comes up regularly and invariable turns into a cat fight .

Peter_n_Margaret · Guru

Irrelevant question.
Do people only keep safe and obey the law if there is a penalty for not doing so?
That's dumb.
I fully support random and regular weighing of all vehicles and with the current history and record of caravan rollovers I fully expect that will happen.
Bring it on.
Cheers,
Peter

Dougwe · Chief one feather

G'day Ian,

Yep, me. I was pulled over on the Hume Hwy near Barnawartha turn off, nth east VIC and just south of Albury/Wodonga. I was then directed to turn off the hwy and go to behind the BP servo (Logic Centre) just down the road a tad. There was checked by two people with ID's form Vic Roads Transport dept (Purple Lights people). They had one van in front of me and another further on to the left. The one in front left as did I, both all good. The one further on was being spoken too by someone with pad and pen in had. I can only assume he was being booked.

I even had to take van off car so the could check both van and car then hook up again. The checked shackles, connections, mirrors, rego etc. Yep , they had a fine tooth comb in hand.

For anyone interested, the same BP servo has a public weighbridge out back of Hungry Jacks. There is a cost involved and for memory I think around $30 per weigh. It's a D.I.Y. set up.

They also have a small Solar farm set up out front that runs about 4 electric car fill stations.

iana · Guru

Thankyou for the sensible reply Doug, I wonder, do they just book you with a fine, or do you have to off load on the side of the road until one complies. That was the story I heard. I too want to comply, but its not that easy when there are two of you traveling.

Possum3 · Guru

Ian, we were pulled over by Police just East of Mt Isa Qld, October 2016, and had both tug and van weighed and our paperwork checked and breathalysed. They told us they had specifically been bussed in from Rockhampton for blitz.
Vehicle beside us (LC 100 +Jayco) was booked overweight and had to call towtruck to come and collect their van, owner was spewing mad as they wouldn't allow him to remove anything out of van.

Peter_n_Margaret · Guru

You will not be permitted to drive out unless you are 100% compliant.
Cheers,
Peter

Knight · Senior Member

Solar powered EV recharge stations?

So no night driving, or driving before the Sun is high in the sky and needing to recharge the battery pack.

I'll stick to liquid fuels until the price is right for a suitable EV with adequate range for country travelling, and recharge stations as many as liquid fuel pumps.

Mike Harding · Guru

Peter_n_Margaret wrote:
Do people only keep safe and obey the law if there is a penalty for not doing so?

Depends: a lot of the safety type laws which proliferate nowadays both encroach on personal freedom and choice and/or are just plain daft.

Bad law should be ignored.

Hewy54 · Senior Member

Mike Harding wrote:
Peter_n_Margaret wrote:
Do people only keep safe and obey the law if there is a penalty for not doing so?
Depends: a lot of the safety type laws which proliferate nowadays both encroach on personal freedom and choice and/or are just plain daft.
Bad law should be ignored.

What a silly statement.

Good luck in fighting that one if you get caught out.

Eaglemax · Guru

iana wrote:
There is a lot of campfire heresy about this, but has anybody actually had their rig weighed, and are there just warnings issued, or is the offence taken more seriously.

Ultimately, onus on the driver. I've noticed however the tendency to slowly add weight with extra clothes, food, drinks and so on. In my case it means I should carry only say 40 litres of water.

As weighbridges aren't on every corner, at some point I'd be marginally overweight. So to extend the OP question, would authorities allow say draining some water to be compliant?

Let's be honest, many rigs are overweight. Fact. One comment recently was to leave tanks empty till arrive in a town then fill them up at say a park the dtive 20km to a free camp. Point is, 20km travel overweight is still unlawful.

So my concern is going slightly overweight (over tug limit only) without knowing. If so can water be drained to be legal? We are talking only up to 50kg.

Tony.

the rocket · Guru

In answer to your question iana it is a big yes. About a month ago we were staying at kilkivan sports oval free camp qld. A nice policeman pulled in and we got talking. He did not have any weighing equipment but he checked all our weights etc. added them all up and we were within the limit. Spent about 30 minutes. an education exercise. He mentioned he had recently done caravan pullover blitz at gooMeri Qld. No one was fined but it was more an educating exercise. He also said they were applying for more funding to do it More. I do not know if this means in future it will be an education exercise again or full on fines.

best not to be overweight anyway. Potential for Insurance companies to wipe you in an accident. we had our van upgraded.

-- Edited by the rocket on Monday 30th of September 2019 05:47:27 PM

Whenarewethere · Guru

A useful feature would be a remote control valve to flush water tanks.

Radar · Guru

The truth is as a retired transport driver, I still think its a load of rubbish car and caravan being pull over for weighing only. Weighing only.

A. it may of happen in each state once or twice back a couple of years ago by a do goodie public servent but the laws to manage overweights for caravans is really to hard, to may variants.

There is plenty of laws for trucks but really there mostly for maximum weights for roads not individual cars, caravans and served by the main roads weigh personal.

The Police as far as I am aware are not trained to use a weighbridge, so that really takes them out of the scheme of things. Now the Police could look at the gvm/gcm on your rego and if they found an illegality they could jump though hoops to do something about it. eg a 3 tonne towing capacity car towing a 3.5 tonne tared caravan, yes your in trouble, they would not need to weigh either car or caravan. Its all on paper. When I questioned a nephew a NSW road traffic policeman looked at me stupid and said not on my list of penalties to serve

Transport inspecters, now that total another issue. They work close in organised groups when doing targets on road transports, generally at portable scale operation areas. Now they could pull a car and caravan in, yes it could happen but as a ex truck driver I don't think so, there is more then enough trucks out there keep them busy.

Now another one I hear is "being asked to unhitch the trailer". 46 years of driving heavy transports never, never been asked to detach the trailer. That is so xxxx dangerous for anyone to detach a trailer just anywhere. The authorities have got enough on you if you are heavy one end or the other. So need to detach. When the rumors were going about I would lock my jockey wheel away and told my wife "if we ever get pulled up take the family jewels and head away from the car and caravan and don't look back.

I have heard over the time some great stories of this and that. The one where police pulled a car and caravan up. Had wood on the roof not secured down. Thank god the copper was on the ball, that could of been a disaster and there has been others.

The other one, they are pulling over caravans at such and such, yes they were along with every other motorists for breathalyzer maybe liencing check. I laughed when I read about one at Kilcoy Qld in 2018, we had about an hour ago come though breathalyzer ourselfs then to read it on this forum how they were weighing caravans. Miss leading joke.

Really sorry about this being a little long, truth of the matter is its such involved question with so many answers.

-- Edited by Radar on Monday 30th of September 2019 05:48:57 PM

Cloudy · Member

Knight,

The solar panels store energy into a battery system which is used to recharge your vehicle. So if you rock up at night you can still recharge so long as the battery has some juice left in it.

Radar · Guru

Eaglemax wrote:
iana wrote:
There is a lot of campfire heresy about this, but has anybody actually had their rig weighed, and are there just warnings issued, or is the offence taken more seriously.
Ultimately, onus on the driver. I've noticed however the tendency to slowly add weight with extra clothes, food, drinks and so on. In my case it means I should carry only say 40 litres of water.
As weighbridges aren't on every corner, at some point I'd be marginally overweight. So to extend the OP question, would authorities allow say draining some water to be compliant?

Let's be honest, many rigs are overweight. Fact. One comment recently was to leave tanks empty till arrive in a town then fill them up at say a park the dtive 20km to a free camp. Point is, 20km travel overweight is still unlawful.

So my concern is going slightly overweight (over tug limit only) without knowing. If so can water be drained to be legal? We are talking only up to 50kg.
Tony.

Hi Tony, as a truck operator we did get a 10% tolerance on our trucks axles weights so I would imagine we as caravaners would be allowed the some tolerance but if you are over that tolerance it reverts back to the main figures again.

This is blowing my brain trying to explain the technical side of things.

Incidently I run legal with my set up and am mostly well under.

Radar · Guru

Possum3 wrote:
Ian, we were pulled over by Police just East of Mt Isa Qld, October 2016, and had both tug and van weighed and our paperwork checked and breathalysed. They told us they had specifically been bussed in from Rockhampton for blitz.
Vehicle beside us (LC 100 +Jayco) was booked overweight and had to call towtruck to come and collect their van, owner was spewing mad as they wouldn't allow him to remove anything out of van.

I personally find there is a lot missing from this story. 100 towing a large caravan with there low towing capicity, there is more to this story.

And you will notice it was in that era when stories started to get around about caravans being this and that.

yobarr · Guru

Radar wrote:
Possum3 wrote:
Ian, we were pulled over by Police just East of Mt Isa Qld, October 2016, and had both tug and van weighed and our paperwork checked and breathalysed. They told us they had specifically been bussed in from Rockhampton for blitz.
Vehicle beside us (LC 100 +Jayco) was booked overweight and had to call towtruck to come and collect their van, owner was spewing mad as they wouldn't allow him to remove anything out of van.
I personally find there is a lot missing from this story. 100 towing a large caravan with there low towing capicity, there is more to this story.
And you will notice it was in that era when stories started to get around about caravans being this and that.
- -Hi Ralph....Not sure from where you got your information,but both models of the LC100 have 3500kg towing capacity.One has GCM of 6760kg while the other the other has GCM of 6680kg.Cheers

-- Edited by yobarr on Monday 30th of September 2019 06:44:18 PM

iana · Guru

Thanks for the replies, but don't get me wrong, I agree that we all should be towing legally, but to get that to happen won't be over night. It will be a long education process, and all the parties from the buyer, seller etc. have to be in on the party.
I remember going into the yard where we brought our van, one of the salesmen asked what vehicle I had, telling him, he said I can choose any van in the yard, not true, and very misleading. To make matters worse, our rego. papers had a typo giving us half a ton more combined mass than we should have had. But that's past, and now am working on lowering the weight, but we are thousands of k's from our base so its very hard.
I am really trying to find out if we get weighed, what to expect.

Possum3 · Guru

yobarr wrote:
Possum3 wrote:
Ian, we were pulled over by Police just East of Mt Isa Qld, October 2016, and had both tug and van weighed and our paperwork checked and breathalysed. They told us they had specifically been bussed in from Rockhampton for blitz.
Vehicle beside us (LC 100 +Jayco) was booked overweight and had to call towtruck to come and collect their van, owner was spewing mad as they wouldn't allow him to remove anything out of van.
I personally find there is a lot missing from this story. 100 towing a large caravan with there low towing capicity, there is more to this story.
And you will notice it was in that era when stories started to get around about caravans being this and that.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
No more to story Jayco had Generator box and bicycles on back - LC loaded to gunwales with tinny on top.
Timing is relevant as it was about the time Qld Police started their offensive - as I stated bus load of Police were brought out to western Qld from Rockhampton specifically to conduct a blitz in conjoint operation with Qld Dept Transport. I believe it was a week long operation in school holiday period.

wendyv · Guru

There was a media report (ABC online news?) over the weekend about a big weighing exercise on highway going west from Sydney. They were not doing caravans (or report did not say they were). But doing vans, mini buses, motorhomes, 4WD's, vehicles towing things on trailers, and the like. A number of infringement notices issued. They seemed to be particularly interested in 4WD vehicles overloaded - which may be something for drivers of these, who also tow vans, to be aware of. It is not just overweight vans to watch out for.

Greg 1 · Guru

They do checks in WA. Had one a couple of years ago on the Brand Hwy near the Jurien Bay turn. Had a skip bin that you could discard things into to get your weight down. They were lightening your pockets too if you were over weight. I was ok though thank god.

Bicyclecamper · Guru

When we bought our new to us, used 16 ft poptop c.van, I made a terrible mistake in not actually reading the weights part of the rego papers. 2 years down the track, I read it, and it said the tare was 1107 kg, and the GVM was 1200 kg. Well to me that was a major red flag. In the next two weeks, organised for a GVM engineers upgrade. A month later this was done. The van empty actually weighed 1337 kg, and the new GVM was 1670kg. I took the paper work to the RMS, and they were surprised, that this 1993 vehicle had been towed around that long( this was in 2016), with the old weights, and said I would have been a bad position had I ever been weighed by their inspectors. By the way, I did not have to do a suspension upgrade, as I had independent offroad suspension on the van as existing, with heavy duty leaf springs and heavy duty Ford bearings and braking. Was very lucky that I checked my papers properly, and will not forget to do this in the future.

-- Edited by Bicyclecamper on Thursday 3rd of October 2019 08:17:00 PM

Knight · Senior Member

Thank you for the reminder, I recently paid for renewal of registration and checked the paperwork ...

Jurgens Skygazer Model J2205 shown as J2204

Tare Weight 1465 shown as 1500

GVW 1800 shown as 1627

I have sent an inquiry to the department.

Maybe this is a dealer error when registering my brand new interior customer choice by special order caravan?

Radar · Guru

Knight wrote:
Thank you for the reminder, I recently paid for renewal of registration and checked the paperwork ...

Jurgens Skygazer Model J2205 shown as J2204

Tare Weight 1465 shown as 1500

GVW 1800 shown as 1627

I have sent an inquiry to the department.

Maybe this is a dealer error when registering my brand new interior customer choice by special order caravan?

Same here, after nearly 4 years friend said to me that my dual cab is better off weight wise then his, no way I said my rego papers show this but after doing some checking he was right almost 200kgs on my gvm and a heap more on my gcm.

A quick call to the dealer after a coup of apologies, with in about 1 hour had correction, short trip to the motor register and all fixed.

A. Did not know or was not pointed the weight differences out that the Navara V6 model had better gvm and its in real small dark print on there coloured sales papers.

So easy to come undone.