Planning to use your vehicle for towing? Be vigilant and make sure to choose wisely. It's crucial not to tow a weight exceeding your vehicle's capacity. Also, there's no need to choose an excessively large vehicle for small towing tasks. The Jeep Compass won't pull your trailer, but the RAM 3500 might be too powerful for your snowmobile!

Your towing capacity is the maximum weight your vehicle can safely tow.

However, even though it sounds simple, determining your towing capacity involves more than just the number printed on your vehicle. Here are some guidelines that should help you.

Key Measures of Towing Capacity

To measure your towing capacity, you need to take and compare several different measures. Let's start with key measures you'll need to determine if you can safely drive.

Curb Weight: The total weight of your vehicle with only the driver and liquids such as oil and fuel.
Payload: The weight of everything you add to your vehicle, including equipment and all passengers.
Gross Trailer Weight: The weight of your trailer or caravan, including accessories but excluding equipment and cargo.

Calculating is Simple

Towing Capacity = Your Gross Vehicle Weight Rating - (Curb Weight of Your Vehicle + Your Payload).

A Small Example?

You have a trailer that weighs 5,000 pounds. Adding luggage and food for the week, let's say that's an additional 500 pounds.

Then you need to add the weight of your vehicle and your passengers. Let's add around 5,000 pounds for your vehicle and about 500 pounds for a family of four.

So, the chosen vehicle must be able to tow up to 11,000 pounds to be legal and comfortable.

For the weight, you'll need to do the calculation yourself. But for our vehicles, as we are the specialists, we know them well. Here's the list of towing capacities for our vehicles.