Carrying building materials in the boot of a car.

[Graham.]

Specifically chunky clay roof-tiles. About how many can I carry safely in the back of a hatchback?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

The driver's handbook should give details of the maximum load. Otherwise just limit it to the weight of the number of adults it can carry in the back.

I do know a ton of paving slabs ain't a good idea in a Mini Van. The tyres were touching the wheel arches...

[ARWadsworth]

The Berlingo I saw on the motorway today with a ton bag of ballast in the back did not look too healthy either.

[The Other Mike]

Look on the VIN plate and find the gross vehicle weight.

Deduct the kerb weight of the vehicle.

Deduct your own weight, and the weight of assorted crap in the glovebox. If the fuel tank is not full then add on 0.7kg per litre to top it off.

This gives the maximum load you can carry.

Divide this by the weight of one roof tile and Robert is your brothers hamster (or something like that)

But there may be restrictions on the weight you can carry in the boot, only the vehicle handbook would be able to tell you.

1000 Marley concrete tiles weigh 3 tonne, so each one weighs 3kg I could only carry 13 of them in the boot of one of my vehicles if I stuck to the manufacturers recommendations, if I put them in the passenger compartment I could carry another 12.

But, I reckon I could physically fit a couple of hundred in the boot.

[MrFerrous]

My small hatchback (old Fiesta) can carry about 330kg (including driver) according to the manual. It gets a bit wobbly with more than 75kg in the "boot" which is right at the back of car. If you need to carry more than that, I suggest distributing the tiles across the seats and footwells of passenger compartment as well.

Assuming 2.5kg per tile (big assumption), that would mean 30 in the boot alone, or perhaps 100 in the whole car. The car's manual probably recommends increased tyre pressures when fully loaded.

[tony sayer]

In article , Graham. scribeth thus

See if you can find in the handbook the rated load weight it can carry and then find out the weight of the tile in question a bit of division and that should be as good a guide as any..

Course do as I say and not as I do .. I bought the whole extension roof home once in the back of the A6 estate sure levelled out the ride;!.

Well it did take 2 runs....

[js.b1]

The problem is when you stop suddenly, where do the tiles go?

In most cars you can carry 4 adults of nominal 75kg each. The weight needs to be similarly distributed and relatively secured - not all in the boot because you could actually damage the floor and if the weight shifts you could end up flying off the road. Equally you would need to increase tyre pressure the pretty near the maximum as by the handbook or label on the inside of the drivers door. Normal pressures may be 32/26psi fr/rr but for maximum load you may need

40/36psi which is a substantial difference.

In practice for 3kg tiles I would put 25 in the book (75kg) and 25 in the passenger footwell (75kg) and 20 across the rear seats (60kg). Do not put anything in the footwell behind the driver, because that can slide forward under heavy braking and jam under your brake pedal on some cars.

If you are thinking of 600kg of tiles, forget it, traffic police will pounce if they see a car overloaded and the fines are stiff. Braking distance really is substantially greater near a cars maximum load and handling generally sucks. A tile is not distributed like people and weight can shift, so if you can do several trips or get a delivery it can be worth it. A full pallet of tiles is so heavy the only practical solution is hire a (BIG) truck or have them delivered.

If using roofing battens those to BS-whatever are a lot better than those not which tend to be whatever rubbish they could get down to the size without falling to bits in doing so.

[pete]

Also be aware of the axle weight. Dunno if it applies to hatchbacks but a work colleague got pulled a few years back. He had borrowed a small tipper. While all the documentation was in order, he had just loaded all the stuff he wanted to transport onto the back end. The police took exception, escorted him to the local weighbridge and although the load *was* within the limits of the vehicle, it was all concentrated on the back axle - busted!

[ARWadsworth]

So one driver and the equivalent of 2 MiLs..........

[tim....]

When I had to carry this sort of stuff I distributed it around the car a bit (as well as conforming to the weight limit)

tim

[Andy Champ]

If you have two MiLs that counts as self inflicted. However...

Once upon a time I was looking for a plug to connect a towbar harness into a Cavalier. I didn't want to pay Vauxhall's silly price for the official harness, so off to the scrappy and have a rummage.

One of the cars had all its seats demounted, and was covered al over the inside with a grey granular stuff. Most of the windows were broken.

I asked. The guy had loaded some bags of cement in the hatchback, and all was well until he did an emergency stop. The cement didn't stop until it had torn all the seats out, and killed the driver. Then the bags split, filling the car with dust just to make sure he was dead. The granular stuff was damp cement.

Have you considered delivery?

Andy

[ARWadsworth]

Are you sure he had not killed the MiL?

That granular stuff could have been the ex MiL with a bit of quicklime....

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Andy Champ saying something like:

An alarm company I worked for had some Escort vans, and in the back of them were mounted the very long drills for thick stone walls. Some utter braniac had mounted them (in every van) directly behind the drivers' heads. This was rectified following an emergency stop, where a couple of drills whizzed past the driver's nut and shot through the windscreen. Luckily for him the force of the stop had caused him to bob his head down a couple of inches...

[Mark]

Traffic Police patrolling the roads is a thing of the past IME.

[dennis]

They patrol around here, in unmarked cars.

They have several Volvos, some BMWs, Skodas and probably others which I have yet to spot. They are very difficult to spot, unless you see one responding you probably wouldn't know it was one.

[Martin Bonner]

That doesn't make sense. A typical adult weighs about 75kg or more (and 100kg is not /particularly/ large), so assuming you can get two adults in the back passenger seat, that would be *at least* 50 tiles in the back seat alone.

[Bill]

In message , "dennis@home" writes

The aerials can be a give away, but you have to be quite close to see them. Plus some cars seem to have similar to these fitted for normal radio use too.

A combination of UHF RT and GPS

[Andy Champ]

My son tells me there are Skodas on the A1. I've seen an unmarked Vauxhall (but covered in incy wincy blue flashing lights!) here in Thames Valley area.

Andy

[Dave Plowman (News)]

'Plain' cars seem to be getting very common in London - and those blue lights in the headlights, etc, simply ain't so visible as on the roof. Not anything like as bright either.

What ever happen to the sirens which were meant to give you more of an idea where the vehicle is coming from?

[Mark]

My opinion is based upon that I see many traffic offenses being committed every day. I've never seen anyone been stopped by the Police for them though. Even if I do see a marked Police car in the vicinity they just drive on past.