OK so you are driving along following your sat nav and you come up on a road restriction. Right, hands up those that can tell me the height, width and length of your towing vehicle and caravan? No hesitating now!
Hands down. I’ll bet not many of you could. Not wanting to appear on YouTube as the next “fail” trying to extract my caravan from a low bridge or narrow road, a while ago I made a small ‘aide memoire‘ to stick on the back of my sun visor.
In the Caravan Chronicles office we have a Brother QL560 label printer that just happens to come with a bit nifty label creating software and it only took five minutes to produce a label that Leonardo would be proud off….
Creating the caravan size label
I included all the relevant sizes for the tow vehicle and caravan and the total length of the combined outfit. It is thermally printed on a self adhesive label and securely attached to the rear of my sun visor. Here’s a close up:-
So it’s easy to check on both the tow vehicle (it’s amazing how many car parks have a barrier that I can only just squeeze under!) and on the caravan. It also gives me the total length of the outfit when coupled.
So if you have nothing to do this weekend because you’re not away in the ‘van, get the handbooks out for the tow vehicle and caravan and make yourself a label.
In the next version I make I might include the tyre pressures and axle weights too. Although then it can become a bit cluttered… maybe another label for the passenger side…. Hmm.
Safe towing this Bank Holiday weekend everyone.
S
Caravan Chronicles 
Hi do I get a caravan measurements label please?
Simon, great minds think alike … see my version at http://www.caravantalk.co.uk/community/gallery/image/6641-car-van-spec-diagram/.
BTW, your homepage link to “The Shirker” needs updating as it not longer exists … rumour has it he sold his Motorway Service info to Practical Caravan, where it may appear in the future.
John
Hi John
Like your drawing…. as you say “great minds…..” 🙂 Years ago my flying instructor had a saying…. “It’s better looking at it than looking for it” and that is so true!
Thanks for the update on Shirker’s site. I’ll update the page. Unfortunately I don’t have time to check all the links that frequently but thankfully good people like yourself let me know.
Cheers
S
Nice one… where did you get you profile pictures from (not that I think you can’t draw, but it does look very professional)?
Hi
If you search for ‘free clip art – transport’ in Google images, you can usually find images that closely match your tow car and caravan. In my case, the label software had free clip art of the caravan. Most ‘free’ clip art is free to use non commercially, but check the T’s & C’s on the website supplying the image.
If you have photoshop, it’s fairly straight forward to turn a photo into a low res black and white line drawing.
S