Truckies back safer caravan concept

It started as an observation, distilled from many hours of travel, but the concept of a ‘wheel-at-each-corner’ caravan aired on caravancampingsales last week has attracted a lot of interest, from long-time caravanners to RV industry experts and truckies.

Supporters believe it’s an idea long overdue to be implemented, while many have raised concerns about the perceived difficulty of reversing a caravan with two pivot points.

Suspension expert and Vehicle Components Engineering Manager Deon Van Deventer, told Caravancampingsales that the ‘wheel-at-each-corner’ caravan concept was both feasible and overdue.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that a well-designed and manufactured dog trailer/caravan will leave its traditionally styled compatriots for dead,” he said, citing superior stability and control as major reasons.

“The design itself is inherently more stable with the load being supported in four corners – no coincidence that motor vehicles, freight trailers and road trains all resemble this layout.

“It is much less sensitive to imbalances in load distribution within the van, an issue that is the primary cause of many caravan handling problems, ending all too often with disastrous consequences.”

Van Deventer said anti-sway systems provided vital back-up, but they could not cure a poorly-designed van nor prevent sway from starting.

“All it will take to get something going is a bit of collaboration between a components supplier and a caravan/trailer manufacturer,” he said.

Truckie and road safety advocate Rod Hannifey is another fan of the concept, and even supplied some real-life photos of a New Zealand-based caravan from a few years ago built with dolly front wheels.

“There are no doubt obvious benefits from the concept you propose, but I think the biggest issue would be getting the right weight distribution and handling,” Hannifey said.

“Backing of dog trailers would be beyond many as few can back a van now it seems and whilst some dogs have lock pins, this helps when empty and may work with vans, but they can take years to master and so for the odd tripper, perhaps too hard.”

RV safety expert Colin Young of the Caravan Council of Australia, who some time ago was involved in a trailer project in the USA involving both pig and dog trailers, said handling and stability could be far superior with dog (wheel at each corner) trailers, but the critical issue was the body twisting on anything but smooth and level roads.

“The main disadvantage, safety-wide, of both dog and pig (wheels at the centre, e.g. conventional caravan) trailers, compared with 5th-wheelers, is the fact that the articulation point is mounted quite some distance behind the rear axle of the tow vehicle, so that when you turn one way, the front of the 'van has to travel the other way,” Young explained.

Tony Thomas, of Caravan Relocation services, was also enthusiastic about the concept, believing any manufacturer that “embraces the wheel-at-each-corner’ idea with lots of research and development and comes up with a great looking caravan will be on a winner”.

Thomas said that over the past decade he had noticed how the axles of many single or tandem-axle vans had been pushed back even further, increasing ball weight substantially.
“With these new utes that are legal towing 3.5 tonnes, yet weigh little more than two tonnes, it has become a case of  ‘the tail wagging the dog’ and this in my opinion, along with driver inexperience, causes many caravan crashes.”

Ex-truck driver Terry Seymour agreed with many others that reversing would pose a major problem with the wheel-at-each-corner design.

“I drove trucks for 50 years including road trains for the last six years and with dogs it was a whole new world learning to reverse,” Seymour said.

“If you think the caravan public have problems now, introduce a dog combination and half their holiday will be taken reversing!”

But not everyone agreed.

“Brilliant idea; backing up no problem,” commented Colin Royston. “Do what good truckies do; uncouple and connect to the front of towing car and push it anywhere you want – just have to buy another tow ball.”

Reader Andrew Morom put forward another simpler solution.

“For those that think it is impossible to back with a double pivot, just do what the trucking industry has done – fit an electric pivot lock on the turntable and then it only has the one pivot point at the tow hitch,” he said.

A number of caravan and RV accessory manufacturers including Evernew, Kimberley, Roma and AL-KO were contacted for comment, but none replied before deadline.