Payload, weight limits and driving licences
The least glamorous subject in motorhoming and the one that catches most people out. What the limits mean and how a full family stays legal.
Is weight really an issue in a motorhome?
It is the single most overlooked thing in the hobby. Every van has a maximum permitted weight, and the gap between that and the van as it leaves the factory is your payload: passengers, water, food, bikes, awnings, tools, toys, the lot. On a 3.5 tonne van a family can eat the whole payload allowance frighteningly fast. Get the loaded van on a weighbridge early on, per axle as well as total, and you will know exactly where you stand rather than hoping.
What licence do I need to drive a motorhome?
If you passed your car test before January 1997 you have grandfather rights to drive up to 7.5 tonnes. If you passed after that date, a standard licence covers you to 3.5 tonnes, and anything heavier needs the C1 entitlement, which means a medical, a theory test and a practical. That single rule shapes the whole market: it is why so many vans are built down to 3.5 tonnes, and why heavier chassis vans like our big family coachbuilts suit those who can drive them.
How do you manage payload with a big family?
Honestly, by not pretending. The standard industry assumption of 75 kilograms per person is optimistic once you add clothes, boots and everything a real person travels with, and with five or six of us aboard that error multiplies. Our approach has been heavier chassis vans with genuine payload rather than squeezing a family into 3.5 tonnes, plus the weighbridge habit, plus a periodic cull of the stuff that crept aboard and never gets used.
Should you travel with a full water tank?
Water is heavy: a hundred litres is a hundred kilograms of payload. Our rule of thumb is to travel with a part filled tank for flexibility and brew stops, and only fill right up just before heading somewhere without a reliable tap, which for us usually means before a wild camping stretch. If you are tight on payload, travelling brim full every day is one of the easiest weights to cut.