Nose Weight and Loading Your Caravan

Gareth, it is surprising how little you will need to move to get the nose weight you feel happiest with. When you think logically on the maths side, it could well be only moving half of what you expect.

If you are keeping the weight at floor level and with nothing heavy at the very back, you should be fine.

With practice you will probably find two ways of loading the van you are happy with, one for short, lightweight breaks and the other for the fully loaded long trip. I'd advise to keep a note of both and what your nose weight is.

Colin

Thanks Colin,

I'm sure you're right its just a lot more to consider than towing my trusty camp-let which I genuinely couldn't tell was on the back until i saw it in my mirrors when turning a corner :)

The real headscratcher is why manufacturers are making cars lighter and caravans heavier but that's a conversation for another day!

We had a Camplet Savanne mid way in our caravan ownership. It was an amazing bit of kit and I can remember back in 2009 towing it from The Loire back to where we lived in Essex at a "fairly brisk" speed without having to fill up with fuel on the way. That was about 450 miles.

Surprisingly the Camplet had a higher nose weight than any of 5 caravans weighing from 900-1350kg have had.

Colin

To bring the message across the demo videos exaggerate the effect of adding weight at the back by going to extremes that no sensible person would attempt to copy. It's unlikely that 20kg at the back would make that much different, but the proof is in the pudding and, with a bit of extra care, it's worth putting it to the test.

Hi Gareth,

Just experiment with positioning the awning to the rear of the axle and measure the effect it has on reducing th nose weight. Colin is right - you don't need much behind the axle to make a difference. Our Coachman is very close to its 100kg hitch weight empty to counteract the weight of gas bottles etc ahead of the axle we add a mattress topper, bedding, clothes and two chairs on or under the tranverse bed behind the axle and this brings the hitch weight back to around 90kgs. (Just remember to put the rear steadies down before you climb on board with the awning!)

Roger

The other thing to bear in mind is the fully laden weight of the caravan. Most caravans these days can only take a surprisingly low payload. I always have to carry my awning in the car boot. Try to get to a public weighbridge. It is shocking how easy it is to overload your caravan. I went all the way to Spain and back before I realised how much I had overloaded the caravan. 

Whilst you certainly don't want to exceed any weight limits (tow-ball loading / hitch loading) try to achieve the maximum permitted loading, or just a little below. This will give a more stable tow.

As Tony Burton has commented, payloads are sometimes ridiculously low. Because of this I went to the trouble many years ago of weighing everything that went into the caravan. Most things were weighed individually but other things like clothes were by the 'arm full' using bathroom scales. I have kept all these weights on a spreadsheet and amend as necessary as items change. If I need to move any weight around I can see what can be easily moved and what weight it is. One of my favourites is the towels which can easily be moved from one under-seat locker to another to achieve the balance even though they only weigh a few kilos. It is surprising the difference that small move makes to the nose weight.

On the other hand I would suggest that if a change in noseweight of, say, 5kg is going to make an appreciable difference to the handling of the outfit, there’s something wrong somewhere. Surely moving towels around inside isn’t going to change the noseweight any more than that unless there’s a whole locker full of them.

Surprisingly it does. Our towels weigh 4kg. They usually travel on the front dinette seat about half a metre in front of the axle. Moving them to the rear dinette seat, about half a metre behind the axle changes the nose weight by about 5kg. Strange but true. 

The more stable tow was referring to having the nose weight as near maximum as possible. I know of someone who put all the weight in the back of the caravan so that there was almost no weight on the tow ball. It was no wonder he was stopped by the police on the motorway because of obvious tail wag. (It was his first time towing).