How to pack a caravan for towing for safety

You’ve packed up the caravan, loaded up the car, and recorded the weights. You know your GCM, GVM and ATM. You are pretty confident that you have not exceeded any weight limitations. You are ready to go travelling.

Hold on… before you go, there’s one more thing to discuss, and that’s how to pack your caravan for towing. Just because the weights look good, it doesn’t mean they are in the right place. Margie and I together have 100s of thousands of kilometres travelled while towing a range of campers and caravans.

The tips below are both scientifically backed and real-life tested.

Here are a few important things to know about weight distribution and the effect it can have on your caravan and tow vehicle.

Where to place your weight – high or low?

You have probably heard of the term “low centre of gravity”. This is important on where you load items into your caravan. A caravan that has a “low centre of gravity” will become more stable while travelling.

To create a low centre of gravity, place lighter items in higher storage compartments and heavier items in lower storage compartments. You may only have a few hundred kilos of load, but it can make a big difference.

Where to place your weight – front or back?

Placing too much weight at the rear of your caravan can also affect its stability while travelling. This is when caravans can tend to “sway” on the road. Placing more weight at the rear of your caravan will decrease your tow ball downforce, while placing more weight at the front of your caravan will increase your tow ball downforce.

More weight on your tow ball will increase the stability of your caravan while travelling. It is recommended to have a tow ball downforce of around 10% of your caravan’s ATM.

So, loading up the front of the caravan with heavier items as low as possible sounds like the right thing to do, right? Hmmm, not quite. Here is where changing your weight distribution can start to affect other things.

Tow ball down-force – the Conundrum

By changing your tow ball down-force, you will change how your tow vehicle will handle. Increasing your tow ball down-force will increase your weight on the rear of your tow vehicle, which will decrease the weight of your tow vehicle’s front wheels.

This could affect your braking (longer stopping distances), and steering can become vague and understeer. Neither of them do you want.

You also need to consider that increasing your tow ball downforce will place more weight on your tow vehicle, which may lead to exceeding your tow vehicle’s GVM or rear axle weight limit.

Distribute weight between the caravan and the tow vehicle.

One thing that you may be able to do is to move weight from the tow vehicle to the caravan, or vice versa. Doing this will not change your GCM (Gross Combination Mass), but it may balance your weight to give you a better weight distribution.

For example, your tow vehicle may be getting close to its GVM, but your caravan is well under its ATM. You could simply remove items from your tow vehicle and place them in your caravan. Just remember, if you place the items at the front of the caravan, you will increase your tow ball downforce, which in turn places more weight on your tow vehicle.

Our Thoughts

Taking the time to get your weight distribution right will have many benefits. One way to make this easier is by buying yourself a caravan scale. This way, you can experiment with distributing weights around your caravan and tow vehicle at home. Better to experiment on your driveway than out on the road.

We keep a simple record of what we’ve checked and packed before every trip, it saves a lot of second-guessing later. Our Caravan Maintenance Schedule is what we use to keep track of it all.

As you can see, it can be very tricky to pack your caravan for towing, but if you take the time to get it right, you can have a very balanced towing combination which will give you a much safer and enjoyable travelling experience.