If you are towing a horse float, every time you load a horse(s) you can have up to 2+ tonnes of unstable (no pun intended) weight attached to your tow vehicle.
Each horse is different: some will travel well, and others don’t, and because of this as the horse(s) will move around it will impact how your tow vehicle responds.
The following hopefully aids in safe travel for all the occupants, (including the corgi!)
Getting it right can seem like an Einstein Calculation!
Not all tow vehicles are created equally.
What do you tow with?
Is it an under-powered or under-braked vehicle?
For example, if you buy one of our Osborne Equine Floats 3HAL it will have been built to 3500KG ATM. Therefore your vehicle will have to have to correspond to the ability to tow it.
What you put in both the float and the vehicle counts toward the Gross weight
It is easy to be OVERWEIGHT
The information stamp on your towbar may not correspond with your vehicle’s towing rating? For example, you can buy a towbar that can tow to 3500KGs, but if your vehicle is only rated to 3200KGs or less. So the manual Hilux is rated to 3500 Kgs vs Automatic Hilux’s rating of 3200 Kgs
Check with the OWNERS/Technical manual what you can tow with your vehicle before you start to shop for a new horse float or trailer or if you intend to borrow/hire one for the day. (The salesman may not know this fact)
At Osborne Equine we recommend the below:
Do you know your towing vehicle’s towing capacity?
Check the towbar rating:
Know the weight approximately that you are loading, i.e the horses and feed, saddles and humans + the corgi!
And finally, what is the tare weight and Aggregate Trailer Mass (ATM) of the horse float you intend to use?
https://www.transport.wa.gov.au/mediaFiles/licensing/lbu_vs_ib_107.pdf
The weight of the trailer dictates the need for an electric breakaway system. (All our floats will require a Breakaway system.)
Our floats are built with two classifications up to 3200 KGs ATM and 3500kgs ATM
Tow bar rating is not necessarily rated to vehicles rating
This is a good resource https://www.carsguide.com.au/towing-capacity#:~:text=(*%20More%20about%20unbraked%20and,from%20a%20vehicle%20manufacturer’s%20website.
