How to safely tow a heavy load

BERLIN: If you need to haul furniture or want to bring your own hotel on your next vacation, a trailer or caravan is indispensable.

However, for safety reasons, it's important to make sure you have the right match between the vehicle doing the towing and the trailer.

Germany's Tuev Sued, a leading technical inspection agency, stresses that the permitted towing capacity and drawbar pull must be observed.

Towing capacity indicates the maximum weight that a fully loaded trailer can be towed by the respective vehicle, while drawbar pull indicates the mass that presses vertically on the trailer coupling.

The lower of the two values applies here - usually 100kg. Both pieces of information can be found in the vehicle documents.

To ensure that drivers can be safe on the road, the permissible drawbar load should be used as much as possible. If the trailer is heavily loaded at the rear, the drawbar load may be too low or even negative in extreme cases.

If the trailer is loaded primarily on one side at the front, the permissible values can also be exceeded.

A quick visual side check of the hitch can relay quite a bit of information - if you see bending, there's a danger of instability.

According to Tuev Sued, heavy items should be placed as close to the axle as possible. All parts should also be secured with belts, straps or transport nets so that they do not fly off during sudden braking.

Besides making sure the load is balanced, drivers also need to make sure they don't exceed the permitted total weight. Caravans, for example, often have a low load-carrying capacity. For trailers, attention is needed in regards to the load capacity of the rear axle.

Did you check all these boxes? Then you're ready to get going.

Drivers also need to take the trailer into account when behind the wheel: braking distance and curve radius increase, and more caution is needed in high winds thanks to the vehicle's bigger surface area.