Reader question – Triton towing

“Hi Robert after watching the towing webinar I have ended questioning my self
I own a Mitsubishi Triton MR auto twin cab 4×4 and I’m thinking of buying a Titanium off Road van 18’ single axle as with an ATM of 2880kg and a tare 2200 ball approx 170kg.

My Triton weights 2240 kg with fuel and canopy I did all my calculations and I think I can tow it without a problem it’s only my wife and me I know the vehicle may be a bit light power ways but I’m not a rev head I would be interested in your thoughts Thanks”

So your Triton towcar weighs 2240kg ready to go, then you need to add yourself and wife. Let’s add 260kg for that and some extra gear to make a towcar weight of 2500kg. The Triton’s GVM is 2900kg so you’re 500kg under at this point.

Now you’ve got the ball weight. That’s 170kg, so we add that to make 2670kg…still 230kg under, so good on the GVM.

The max tow of the Triton is 3100kg braked, and your ATM is 2880kg so that’s within limits, especially as the van’s tare is 2200kg and I doubt two people would load it as high as 2880kg.

Now we add the weight of the car (2500kg) and the weight of the van (2800kg as I assume you won’t max it out) and we get 5300kg. The GCM of the Triton is 5885kg so you’re within limits even if you did load your van to the max.

But what about the ball weight? I added that to the GVM figure, why not now?

Because for the GCM calculation the combined mass is the total weight of car + trailer on a weighbridge. For the GVM calculation, the trailer is adding weight to the towcar so the TBM is included.

Towing weights are confusing, so the easy way to do this would be to simply plug the figures into my Towing Weights Calculator, and if the terms above don’t make sense, watch my various videos explaining the concepts.

I do help readers where I can, but I also appreciate you helping me.