ON THE ROAD
Is your car right for your trailer?
I
Even some SUVs and bakkies are
inadequate for heavily-loaded
trailers and horseboxes
quately-powered and
braked vehicle is dangerous.
First among these is that the
manufacturers of such
livestock trailer or the sort of
big ones ~ will reveal that in
vehicles are hardly likely to
double axle trailer one might many cases their towing
fit a towbar to their vehicles
transport a small tractor on.
capabilities ~ at least if they
that exceeds the towing
are to be used within the
A look at the vehicle specificapacity of the vehicle. Thus,
letter of the law ~ are
cations of common doubleif your car is only designed to
cab bakkies ~ and even quite exceeded when pulling such
tow a 750kg trailer you can
trailers fully loaded.
rest assured that the towbar
So it goes without saying that will be rated for no more
station wagons and smaller
than 750kg: grossly inadeand even mid-sized SUVs and quate for a heavier trailer.
“Sandton tractors” are going
The chances, therefore, of
to be inadequate for the job. the towbar snapping are
And, while you might get
increased and in the event of
away with it for short trips
such a calamity the puny
from your smallholding to
safety chain that loops from
local horse shows, etc, a
the trailer to the towbar will
traffic officer with solid
be worse than useless.
knowledge of the law will
Second, the towing vehicle
relish the chance to ticket you may simply be too underfor overloading.
powered to cope with a
There are a number of
heavy trailer. At best this
reasons why towing a heavy
Continued on page 48
A heavy load can unbalance a towing combination if it is mispositioned.
trailer behind an inadef you tow a big trailer
behind your regular road
vehicle there is a good
chance that, firstly you are
overloading your towbar and,
secondly, exceeding the
towing capability of the
vehicle.
By big trailer think two-berth
horsebox, double-axle
46
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