We highly recommend getting yourself a ball weight scale and using it after you ' ve loaded your van for a trip.
Towing the van behind a suitable vehicle in its unladen condition should, in a perfect world, therefore present no problems in terms of its towing performance( though I have certainly experienced exceptions). But when you start adding gear, water, clothes and food, there is the potential to throw this balance out of whack.
Let’ s return to our see-saw analogy. Two people sit at the extreme ends, one person heavier than the other. Naturally, the heavier person will be at ground level while the other has their feet dangling in the air. But what happens if that heavier person moves closer towards the fulcrum? The see-saw begins to come back into balance.
Therefore, the way to maintain balance when loading a van is to load closer to the fulcrum( the wheels), right? Yes, with some caveats.
Obviously, it is impossible to load everything over the wheels. That would be ridiculous, and that’ s not how caravans are designed. They have boots intended to be filled with gear, from barbecues to generators.
But have you also noticed that these boots are always forward of the wheels? Sure, there will occasionally be rear cargo areas, but they are always much smaller spaces. There is method to this madness.
To be stable under tow, caravans have to be nose-heavy. By placing the majority of your payload forward of the wheels, inside the van’ s boot, you’ re ensuring that this weight will be supported by the towbar and tow vehicle.
If you were to load all your gear toward the rear of the van, what is there to support that weight or to counteract the sway that it might induce? Nothing. So when you’ re towing the van along the freeway, with a certain amount of weight added to the rear of the fulcrum with nothing there to support it, it should not come as a surprise that the van feels twitchy or downright unsafe.
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