car weights

armourer

whats a cars gross vehicle weight ?

i know the kerb weight is the cars weight +70kg for the driver 

or am i wrong ?

Vulcan

Gross vehicle weight is the absolute maximum weight of the vehicle that should not be exceeded including passengers, luggage and towball weight etc.

Lutz

Gross weight is a legal plated limit.

There is no legal definition of kerbweight, but in the car industry it is conventionally the weight of the empty car, but with a full fuel tank. It does not normally include the driver, but some sources do include it, so it's a bit ambiguous.

mickysf

I was stopped by the police and placed on a portable weigh bridge. I was one lucky motorcaravaner I was just under the axel weights and the gross vehicle weight.

Whilst being weighed the policeman told me that cars themselves pulling caravans are sometimes over weight as drivers take the tow ball weight into account but often forget the extra weigh of all the chattels and passengers they put inside the car itself. He told me about one car he stopped that was ladened down to the bump stops on the suspension coils. Although the caravan and tow ball weights were fine the car itself was not.

Lutz

Don't forget that the noseweight on the towball counts towards the gross vehicle weight so one must never load the car right up to the limit before hitching the caravan or else one would be overweight afterwards.