Why you should tow faster

Caravanners should keep up with the traffic, not slow it down

COMMENT

A decade ago, most caravans travelled at 80-85km/h; today it’s 90-95km/h; but frankly, that’s not fast enough to keep up with today’s traffic.

If that’s you, you need to lift your game and travel at the most common posted speed limits, be they 100km/h or 110km/h -- up hill, down dale, on the flat and with, or into, the wind.

I’ve come to this conclusion after spending two weeks and 4200km at the wheel of a monstrous, current-model RAM 2500 Laramie, which is technically a truck, rather than a 4WD Ute.

With its 6.7-litre Cummins straight-six turbo diesel engine that produces 276kW and a mind-moving 1084Nm of torque under its large, bulging bonnet, the US-built RAM is superbly equipped for this task.

Hills flatten, head winds abate, turbulence from other vehicles is un-noticed and speed limits are things to drop down to, rather than numbers to aspire to, even when hauling a large 5th-wheeler caravan up to its massive rated braked capacity of 6942kg.

Don't be a road block

However, my comments re travelling faster could apply equally to more humble tow tugs, be they 3500kg-capable SUVs like the latest Land-Rover Discovery 5, Jeep Grand Cherokee and Toyota Landcruiser 200 Series, or even the latest crop of crew-cab utes.

My theory is simple and sound. Travel at the speed limit.

The large B-Doubles and tri-trailer Road Trains that ply our major highways day and night are generally speed-limited to 100km/h and on some roads – like the Gold Coast’s heavily-trafficked M1 freeway – are restricted in some sections to the outer lanes.

This means that if you’re a typical caravanner swaying along at 90km/h on the flat, you'll have a trail of frustrated professional drivers about a metre or two off your caravan’s rear end, looking for an opportunity to get back up to speed and meet their delivery schedules.

Sometimes they'll take risks to get past, such as on brief sections of dual lane road, but if they can only pass you legally at 10km/h faster than your travelling speed, they may run out of road before they can get past safely. Will they change their habits? You’re dreaming! You’re clogging their workspace.

Up-hill, things get worse. While you’re dropping back to 60-70km/h with your caravan, they want to maintain 100km/h and they can with their latest generation high output Cat, Cummins and Detroit Diesel engines, fully laden or empty. So, you’re in their way!

However, if you can maintain the same 100km/h, they have no reason to monster or overtake you.

Now let’s look at other road users. Caravans are generally the slowest things of the highway, but if you are travelling 10-20km/h faster, dispatching them into your rear vision mirror is much easier and you will maintain a higher average speed, with much less fermenting road rage.

In the case of the RAM, doing this on our recent trip was easy and remarkably economical. Calling on that enormous torque, the RAM rarely needed to shift down a gear or more in its six-speed transmission in hauling our 2600kg laden Trakmaster Pilbara Extreme tandem axle off-roader.

Not surprising, as the RAM is fully capable of towing more than twice that weight on its ear, making easy work of even a big 3500kg tare weight off-roader.

Don't fuss about fuel

The benefit of having such a behemoth ahead of a smaller caravan like my Trakmaster is that you get to travel at B-Double highway speed with the fuel economy of a much smaller rig.

Travelling 4177km from Southeast Queensland to Port Douglas via the Bruce Highway and returning by the slightly longer, but town and traffic-free inland route via the Atherton Tableland, Emerald and Roma, produced an overall average fuel consumption of 15.7 litres/100km at an average speed of 75km/h.

As we travelled close to posted speed limits along the way, our true highway average speed would have been nearly 10km/h higher had we not dawdled through a few towns on the way with side trips to Noosa Heads and Airlie Beach.

To put that into perspective, my own Land-Rover Discovery 3 TDV6 weighing around 800kg less with its 2.7-litre V6 single-turbo diesel engine, would only beat that figure by about 1.8 litres/100km at the same speed, while you could expect a Toyota Landcruiser 200 Series to devour up to 3 litres/100km more.

So, you don’t need to outlay around $143,000 on a RAM to put my theory into practice – just spend up a little on fuel.

But to be honest, caravanners have to get over the issue of fuel economy. While Grey Nomads see fuel savings by travelling slower over shorter distances, combined with free camping, as more money left for living, fuel should not be an issue for Australian travellers who are still gainfully employed.

At the $1.28 to $1.34 per litre we paid on our recent Tropical North Queensland trip, an extra three litres per 100 kilometres is about the price of a cup of coffee. Over the course of our 4200km, that would add up to less than $120 – not much more than a few nights on powered caravan sites at peak holiday rates. So, free-camp more and power on - further...

Why you should tow faster

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