[drover]

The transport fellas will always go by whats on their scale read out, so for example you go over a weigh bridge with your van hooked up, you stop your tug on the bridge that will give the GVM of your tug, thats the tug plus the ball weight, then you run the whole rig onto the bridge, this gives you the GCM, next you pull the tug off the bridge, just leaving the van axles on the scale, this gives you the GTM to be fully checked you then reverse so you can unhitch leaving the van on the bridge with axles and jockey wheel, this reading is the vans ATM.............
Then you subtract the GTM from the ATM and you have the ball weight (BW)..... You can then subtract the BW from the GVM you got and that will show you how much is in the tug when unhitched............. head spinning yet ????

Now, it is possible to have a GCM which is legal BUT you could still be over loaded if any of the others don't comply..... We will leave axle weights to another session............. Having to go thru this stuff sort of daily with trucks it becomes second nature, even now..........

Weigh bridge tickets show that everything was good at a certain time, but if you had only half a tank of fuel and no water onboard, added granny later on, things change............ I would be more inclined to worry about Scallies than Insurance, if towing a big arse van with a Prado etc the Insurance mob will get suss but a compliant rig they wouldn't bother unless other things attracted attention, like boat on roof, motorbike on back sort of thing..........

It should be noted you are only overloaded if the actual weight is over the rated weigh for that vehicle, a 3ton tow capacity on a tug doesn't stop it towing a van with marked as 3.5t, if the actual real world load is under the 3 ton all is good....... same for a 300kg ball weight so long as the BW isn't over 300kgs its legal no matter what the compliance plate says....... ignore tare weight its a fantasy that will never been seen again.

A few years back Grands had the GCM marked as they were Cat MC which denotes as a 4WD and gets the GCM noted on the plate, then they went to MA, costs less its a Car class not FWD and doesn't need to have the GCM noted I think they are now MC and have GCM noted on plates, this has made them do a proper classification and thusly derated the GCM so it actually complies..... if you have a look at the regs your brain will go to mush, so my explanation gives a gist of the MA/MC BS............