Rob writes: And now a trailer

“Championing the interesting, the obscure and the mundane” is what it says in the 'About' section of PetrolBlog and while thinking about stuff that met that criteria I had a flash of inspiration.

When I was a small child my dad and uncle shared a couple of speedboats. My dad had a tow bar fitted to his four-year-old Morris 1300 and took the small boat trailer, sans boat, off to a nearby car park to learn how to reverse it. To this day, some thirty plus years later, I still remember him struggling to get his head round the particular technique required to get the whole shebang round a corner backwards. He did his practising somewhere quiet, presumably so that when he was trying to launch the boat he wouldn't make an idiot of himself, and (with one spectacular exception) he never did.

In the following years we had two or three boats and dad hired, and latterly bought, trailers to move detritus around. Our trailer became an incredibly useful accessory to a variety of cars. It hauled bicycles, rubbish to the tip, lawnmowers, church organs, pianos, motorcycles, car spares; an endless multifariousness of things all over the country.

Where did the concept of a trailer originate? A look around the interwebs turned up the interesting information that what we in the UK would call a caravan was already available in 1913, able to be towed by a Model T Ford, and the trailer tent pre-originates even that. I couldn't find any history of the sort of trailer that you throw odds and ends into and move somewhere. I guess it was a natural progression from the horse and cart. As long as the horse(s) were strong enough to pull the cart then you could choose an appropriate size and hitch it up. And today, it's similar; as long as you have the horsepower (and weight) you can tow pretty much what you want.

Your car, if capable of being fitted with a tow bar, does have a couple of weight limits. If your trailer has brakes then you can tow more weight, as the towing vehicle doesn't have to try and stop itself and all the stuff hanging off the back. You'll find the appropriate limits in your car handbook if you have it, or online if not.

Even the best known encyclopaedia websites struggle with the concept of a trailer. This could be because of the sheer range. The only consistency that we can agree on is that a trailer is an unpowered vehicle attached to the rear of a motorised vehicle. There are articulated lorry trailers, refrigerated trailers, box trailers, open trailers, flatbed trailers, car trailers, motorcycle trailers (which confusingly can be small trailers suitable for towing behind a motorcycle or trailers designed to hitch onto a car and carry one or more motorcycles), bicycle trailers (ditto), tipping trailers, drawbar trailers, livestock trailers and boat trailers. And we're not even going to think about film trailers. No use trying to hitch one of those to your car.

What do you need to know about trailers? Well, aside from the massive range there are a few legislation things that are useful to be aware of.

Besides the weight limits mentioned above, when towing with a car or van you're limited to a maximum width of 2.55 metres and length of 7 metres.

There are also some licence conditions depending on when your driving license was issued, but as a general rule bear the weight of 3.5 tonnes in mind. From January 2013 you will be allowed to drive a car and trailer combination up to a total of that weight. People with older licences can tow more, and there's a useful site here that gives the detail: GOV.UK Towing with a car.


If you want to use a trailer to carry a car you need to factor the weight of the car into the whole combination. I still have unhappy memories of towing a Rover SD1 on a four-wheeled car trailer behind one of our Sierra XR4x4s. Above certain speeds the weight of the Rover and trailer took control of the rear end of the Sierra and it was only the fact that we had four-wheel drive that kept the whole combination pointing in approximately the correct direction as the rear wheels occasionally relinquished contact with tarmac. I'm confident that the total weight in that case was well over what the poor Sierra should have been towing, and I'm amazed that we didn't get stopped by the police.

You also need to remember that the speed limit while towing is 10mph less than for a normal car on national limit roads, dual carriageways and motorways (e.g. 60mph maximum on the motorway). That said, I have no idea how a speed camera detects that you're towing a trailer…

Still want a trailer? How do you choose what you want and carve your way through the sheer variety available? As with most things in life the important thing is what you want to use it for. If you just want to show off, get a car like yours, cut the back off and make that into a trailer.

If you're looking for a trailer for a non-specific function, look for something open-topped with decent hooks on the side. The open top allows you to cart around tall stuff. If it has a dropping tailgate, ideally with the rear lights and obligatory reflective red triangles mounted to the sides rather than on the tailgate, so much the better. This allows you to carry long things, bearing in mind that the articulation around the tow hitch can make corners an interesting challenge!

Where to buy one? They are often listed on eBay if you're looking for a used one, or you can get them new from a variety of outlets including the inevitable Halfords. Some are constructed from metal which is strong and relatively light. I was brought up on ones with a metal chassis and uprights but with the main bed and sides constructed of wood. This has the advantage that you can refurbish everything relatively easy when they wear out.

If you're handy with a welding torch and a saw (ideally not simultaneously unless you want your saw permanently attached to your trailer) you can build your own. Plans are available cheaply online but you need to read up on the relevant legislation as things like brakes can't be as simple as they used to be. A friend of mine bought an old caravan very (very) cheaply, had the delightful joy of 'deconstructing' it using a selection of heavy objects, and creating a large trailer out of the resulting chassis. The one significant down-side was that it was incredibly heavy. Even our 2-litre Renault struggled to pull it along.

Your day job is for a Formula 1 team? Then why not try building one out of carbon fibre and extruded aluminium on slicks for the ultimate in high-speed autobahn towing? OK, I'm fairly confident that slicks would be illegal, but it would be fun to see on a track day if the organisers let you on the track.

So what was the spectacular exception to dad's trailer towing? In the mid 1980s he rented a flatbed trailer to move something and I hitched it to the back of his Citroen GSA. On the way home we had to cross a level crossing near a builders yard. As we crossed the train tracks the bumps detached the trailer from the tow bar and it took off on its own. The fact that it had a jockey-wheel meant that the front didn't drag on the ground, so it didn't lose much speed as it ploughed into the rear of a heavily customised Morris Minor van that was innocently parked at the side of the road. As the rear of the van was fibreglass and the trailer was mainly metal, you can imagine that the damage was considerable. Dad took the heat from the poor owner of the van, and to this day has never told me what the damage cost him to repair. It was my fault - I hadn't hitched it on properly.

Get a trailer and learn to reverse it round corners. It's great fun, incredibly useful, trips to the tip won't result in rubbish left in your car, and it's not nearly as mundane as you'd have thought. Especially if you don't attach it to the car properly.

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