Carrying building materials in the boot of a car.

[The Other Mike]

Who said I had a back seat?

40kg limit in the boot 1270kg gross weight 1085kg kerb weight including full fuel tank giving 185kg useful load capacity Take away 39kg for the 13 tiles in the boot leaves 146kg for the humans Take away 100kg for me leaves 46kg 46kg /3kg per tile = 15 Leaving 1kg for mars bars, loose change and a couple of CD's OK I said 12 extra tiles in the passenger compartment, but I wasn't that far off.

With a 100kg driver and a 60kg passenger I really only have 25kg for luggage, or one typical suitcase. Yet I fit three huge sailing bags in the boot containing luggage for a month touring Europe, whether I'm legal or not is debatable :)

[dennis]

I have seen 3 pulled over in the last two weeks, I don't know what for. All were by unmarked cars. In the previous couple of months the police have been pulling cars out of the traffic and sending them onto a lidl car park where there have been twenty or more people doing checks, this happens about every two weeks and they go to other places in between.

[Martin Bonner]

Ah.

That's the problem. Two 5'11" adults wouldn't have to be obese to put you over that limit (and if they were 6'6", they wouldn't even have to be overweight). Does the "gross weight" exclude passengers? (In which case, you can add in the weight of a reasonable passenger.)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Usually number plate recognition cameras saying they've no insurance. Checking a random car for overloading would require some initiative.

[Jethro]

You see an awful lot of dogs unsecured in the backs of cars. A guy I used to work with popped in on his day off, once with his dog lying on the back seat of his Megane. When I suggested he might want to buy a hatchback and put a proper guard in, I was given a right royal rollicking. And he was supposed to be a Mech. Eng ! ....

[Pete Verdon]

Years ago I came downstairs to find my mum weighing bottles of wine on her kitchen scales. Turns out they were planning a major booze cruise through the Tunnel, Dad had told her the maximum payload of the car, and she was working out the average weight of a bottle to see how many they could bring over before the car gave up.

Pete

[SS]

Only on a couple of ocassions I have `overloaded`, probably well over as I never bothered to work anything out. I just packed as much as I could on the floor space then a bit more in the boot. I have done 3 x 2 ` slabs, a couple in the front well and then a couple each behind the front seats, then another 3 in the boot. Probably well over but weight distributed. Thats 10 slabs. Mind you it was a company car :-) Made sure I didnt drive in the rush hour and drove slower than usual.

[Halmyre]

I once got 12 square metres of rolls of turf into my Alfa 156. I don't intend to repeat the process! I weighed one roll when I got home, can't remember the weight but I was slightly horrified.

[ARWadsworth]

Now that reminds me of a friend of mine who some years ago stole a safe from a travel agents.

As it turned out he could not shut the boot on his Cavalier with the safe in there so he covered it with a blanket and tied the boot lid down with some string. On his way home the police stopped him for a routine check and the officer asked my friend "What's in the back, a safe?". My friend answered yes and the officer let him go.

My friend was arrested 2 months later when he cashed the travellers cheques that were in the safe.

[The Other Mike]

The gross weight is always the absolute max, you can't unload passengers.

Maybe its an EU rule but the kerb weight always seems to include a

75kg driver and a full tank of fuel.

But overweight is always overweight, so with no passengers but with the driver onboard a weight below the gross weight is always ok, but the seats have to remain without people in them.

I only quoted the example as a method of calculation and showing how easy it is to get caught out, a lot of small hatches could easily be over their gross limit with 4 or 5 up let alone a load of crap in the boot.

One other thing that seems strange at first is that if you sum the front axle limit and the rear axle limit it always (nearly always?) comes out more than the gross weight to allow for unequal weight distribution.

For instance on my Defender 90

1200kg front 1500kg rear max gross 2550kg, kerb weight (including 75kg driver and full fuel tank) 1793kg

Giving a useful load of 757kg. There is no way I could fit enough fatties onboard to come anywhere near busting the max gross.

[The Natural Philosopher]

however you can, with bricks in the back.

Do be careful when running a defender with 3/4 tonne in it. The thing is unstable at speed, like towing a caravan.

[dennis]

Even a mini is stable towing a caravan if you load the caravan correctly. You can make any car unstable if you load the caravan incorrectly.

There are other reasons why a mini doesn't make a good tow car.

[jgharston]

And get as much as forward of the rear axle as possible. Two sacks of cement in the back of a Polo made for scary uphill (non)steering.

JGH