Towing Question

[Dum-Dum]

What it actually weighs is completely relevant you prune! If i got stopped by Vosa it makes no odds what its plated too! only matters that its under or overweight for my licence entitlements. As we have the only public weighbridge in hereford its our duty to weigh vehicles guided here by vosa for testing and im well aware of the procedures. 

They CANNOT stop you at the side of the road and tell you you are overweight, it has to be proved. Hence why i weighed my truck & trailer before setting off. 99.9% of joe public doesn't have access to a weighbridge like i do.

Actual weight is only important if you are over the plated weight ie have a 3500kg trailer with 5 tonne on it or a 3500kg MAM transit with three 1 tonne bags of sand on the back.

As welshpug said VOSA CAN pull you over at the side of the road and do carry portable scales although I think the scales are only suitable up to a certain weight and not all VOSA have them.

Trust me on this, It's plated weight that's important. I know you can get pulled over and blag past most police officers who don't know the inns and outs of towing regulations or who will leave it alone if it looks alright but the rules say plated MAM of vehicle and plated MAM of tow vehicle.

they have portable scales, have had for a few years, I've seen overloaded transit tippers being pulled into a Tesco carpark by vosa  (dvsa now iirc)


it does matter what the mam of the vehicle is, my bmw is 1400 empty, 2000 gvw.

1800kg towing weight, however on my licence i can obviously only put 1500 behind it.

so a BJ minno with a 1400kg mam is fine with a 205 on it, trailer weighs 400 kg (2 axle thing)  205 is under 1000 kg.

So by dums reckoning, because the vehicle and trailer maximum is beyond your entitlements you cant tow that

No, that welshpug had there is legal 2000kg MAM car towing 1400kg MAM trailer which isn't overladen and isn't in excess of the vehicles max towing weight or heavier than the vehicle is perfectly legal. Gives a GTW of 3400kg.