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Shackles laws


mowie1

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But your shackle and chain should be able to hold the weight of your trailer IF it comes off the towball.

All sounds good until you consider the forces that come into play if you jack knife or get a blow out on a trailer tyre and the trailer rolls, no chain or rated shackle will hold the trailer on when that happens.

You only have to look at some of the caravan accidents where despite having top couplings the van ends up all smashed up and a long way from the towing vehicle. Seen a number of those.

The worst that I ever saw was in FNQ where a B Double had the trailer laying on its side. The truck 50 meters away and the tow A frame with wheels attached a long way up the road. Clearly both the coupling to the truck and the A Frame/wheels connection to the trailer had snapped. Hard to imagine what that all would have looked like as it happened.

Point that I am making is that chains and rated shackles are fine and good to have if a coupling comes off the ball at low speed but don't expect them to keep the trailer safe and simply resting on the crossed chains if the coupling comes undone or breaks when you are travelling at 100KM/hr on a freeway.

Them's my thoughts on the subject, I will probably cop some flack for them but maybe others have seen similar accidents and will agree with me.

Cheers

Paikea

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  • 1 month later...

I've been trying to find this out as there have been quite a few people around the Mid North coast getting fines from the police, not defects and I haven't been able to see anywhere where it states that you are required to have rated D shackles.

My two bob's worth anyway

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