BRISBANE-based businessman Dave Lewis is lifting
the weight off the shoulders of caravanners in his attempt to improve
their safety.
And he is hoping to scale new
heights with his latest venture, a mobile caravan weighing company which
he launched after buying a new caravan and discovering he had
become one of the staggering 70 percent of owners with overweight
caravans.
"I started researching the whole caravan weight issue and was shocked at
what I found," he told Caravanning News.
His fledgling company, Weightcheck, is about
road safety and improving public awareness of the dangers of overweight
caravans.
"In order to do this we had to make the process easier ... why not take
the weighbridge to the caravan, not the caravan to the weighbridge," he
said.
"This was the logical answer. Weighbridges are few and far between, and
this is one of the main reasons owners are reluctant to check their
weights."
The company has now completed over 70 weighing procedures, with
more and more enquiries every week.
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Mr Lewis
tackles another weighing procedure |
The report provides details on the overall
weight of a caravan, including
figures for each wheel and axle,
together with the towball weight, and is
provided as a guide to determine if the caravan is weight compliant.
Mr Lewis said this formed the bulk of his
business.
"But we have noticed now that more of our clients are requesting both the
caravan and the tow vehicle be weighed," he explained.
"This provides the owner with all the weights they need to ensure the
caravan and tow vehicle are under their respective weight limits.
"We provide the Gross Trailer Mass (GTM) Towball Mass (TBM) Aggregate
Trailer Mass (ATM) of the caravan and the Gross Vehicle Mass (GVM) of the
tow vehicle , and the GCM of the whole rig."
Weightcheck has also provided reports to caravan repairers and service
companies, mainly for warranty claims.
"We are currently in talks with a large caravan dealer in Brisbane to
provide weight reports for their trade in caravans and their repair and
service business," Mr Lewis said.
"And also with the National Measurement Institute in Canberra, the
government body that oversees anything to do with weights and measures in
Australia.
"They have been very supportive of our endeavours and provided great
advice on the best practice for of our business.
"We have also had discussions with Queensland Transport and are now able
to issue weight tickets for registration purposes. These documents are
different to our weight reports and are purely for the purpose of
registration, similar to Public Weighbridge Dockets."
More than 50 percent of caravans weighed by his company have been
overweight and Mr Lewis said the majority
had been genuinely concerned about
this.
"The biggest discrepancies we have seen so far
̶ 618kg and 419kg
̶ were on
single axle caravans," he explained.
"We have also seen a couple of rigs that have recorded overweight
combination masses. They have been large caravans with ATMs of around
3500kg being towed by dual cab utes that have GCMs of 6000kg, the highest
being 200kg over the GCM.
Mr Lewis said the company's business model centred around making the
process of checking the weights easy and accessible to every caravan
owner, by taking the weighbridge to the caravan and not the caravan to the
weighbridge.
"Feedback from our customers has been absolutely amazing," he said.
"Although they might not like the results we give them sometimes, if their
'van is overweight they are grateful that they now can make
rectifications to ensure they are compliant.
"The most commonly worded phase we hear is 'I just wanted to get it
checked for my peace of mind '.
"At the end of the day if the caravan is overweight it's not the end of
the world because there are many ways to correct the problem."
The cost of weighing a caravan in the Brisbane metropolitan area is $150
and $200 for a tow vehicle and caravan. The fee is higher for areas such
as the Gold and Sunshine coasts.
