Towing Rules by State: Licences, Weights and What Your Car Can Legally Pull

Here is the thing most towing guides get backwards. The rules people expect to change at the border, the weights and the brakes and the chains, are the ones that do not change. Every state regulator publishes essentially the same numbers, because they all point back to the same national vehicle standards. What actually changes when you cross a border is narrower and easier to miss: how fast you may go, and whether a learner or P-plate driver is allowed to tow at all. This is the current picture for 2026, checked line by line against each transport authority, plus what our own database says about what these cars can legally pull.

The rules that change by state

Verified September 2026 against Transport for NSW, Transport Victoria, Queensland TMR, SA DIT, the WA Road Safety Commission, Transport Tasmania and the ACT Road Rules Handbook. Where a cell reads "no towing restriction published", the licence-condition pages we checked did not list one. That is not the same as a written permission, so confirm with the regulator before you tow on L or P plates.

Two things in that table catch people out. The first is that your licence conditions travel with you. Transport for NSW is blunt about it: NSW learner, P1 and P2 drivers must obey the same conditions in other states as they do at home. It cuts the other way too. A South Australian learner is free to tow at home, and South Australia says so in terms, but they still cannot tow a box trailer in Victoria, because Victoria applies its learner prohibition to permit holders from other states as well. Check the rule for the licence in your wallet, then check the rule for the road you will be on, and obey whichever is stricter.

The second is Western Australia's blanket cap. WA says "the maximum legal speed limit for any vehicle towing a trailer or caravan is 100km/h" with no weight qualifier at all, and adds a 60m minimum following distance behind heavy vehicles and other towing vehicles unless you are overtaking. That is a genuinely different rule from NSW, where the 100km/h cap only bites once you pass 4.5 tonnes.

The rules that are the same everywhere

Trailer brakes, chains and load dimensions come from the national vehicle standards, summarised for light trailers in Vehicle Standards Bulletin 1. The regulators word them almost identically, so these numbers are safe to carry across the country.

When a trailer needs brakes

Wording checked against Transport for NSW, SA DIT, Transport Tasmania's VSB1 compliance appendix and WA Information Bulletin IB-107B. All four state the same three bands.

Safety chains, couplings and the rest

• One chain to 2,500kg, two above it. NSW measures it as the loaded trailer mass, WA and Queensland measure it as ATM, and all three land on the same 2,500kg split. Two chains must be crossed over, and the chains must be short enough to stop the drawbar hitting the road if the coupling releases.
• Unbraked trailers stop at 750kg. If the trailer has no brakes, its loaded mass must not exceed 750kg. That is the ceiling, not a target.
• One trailer only, and nobody rides in it. Stated separately by NSW, Queensland, SA and WA.
• Load width and length. A load must not project more than 150mm past the trailer's sides or exceed 2.5m overall width, whichever is less. The whole combination including the load must not exceed 19m. Anything hanging more than 1.2m off the back needs a 300mm square flag by day and a red light at night.
• If the manufacturer never published a tow rating. The fallback used by NSW, SA, WA and the ACT is one and a half times the unladen mass of the tow vehicle with a braked trailer, or the unladen mass with an unbraked one. This applies to old vehicles with no published figure. It is not a licence to ignore a published rating that you simply find inconvenient.
• Ball download is a loading rule too. NSW and WA both say about 5 to 10 per cent of the loaded trailer mass should sit on the coupling, with roughly 60 per cent of the load forward of the axle and the drawbar level or slightly nose down.

Does a car licence cover it?

Almost always, yes, and for a reason people get wrong: your licence class is set by the tow vehicle, not by the combination. A class C car licence covers a motor vehicle with a GVM not over 4.5 tonnes. The ACT Road Rules Handbook spells out the towing half explicitly, and it is more generous than most people assume: the same class also covers that vehicle "towing a single trailer with a GVM not over 9 tonnes". What class C does not cover is two or more trailers, or a single trailer over 9 tonnes GVM. Towing more than one trailer is separately banned by the road rules anyway.

So a dual-cab plated at 3,350kg GVM pulling a 3,500kg van is a rig of nearly seven tonnes on a standard car licence, entirely legally. The number that would push you into a light rigid licence is the tow vehicle's own GVM crossing 4.5 tonnes, and very few passenger vehicles get there. Across the 1,418 on-sale rows in our database, only six carry a GVM above 4,500kg, and twenty sit exactly on the 4,500kg line, including every Ford Ranger Super Duty variant, which pairs that 4,500kg GVM with an 8,000kg GCM and a 4,500kg braked rating. That is a vehicle engineered right up against the car-licence ceiling.

What your car can actually pull

The legal side is the easy half. The harder half is that four separate plated numbers all have to be satisfied at once, and the one that stops you is rarely the one on the brochure.

The unbraked 750kg is a real wall

Of the 1,196 on-sale cars in our database that publish an unbraked towing figure, 991 publish exactly 750kg, and most of the remainder publish less. That is not a coincidence. It is the national ceiling showing up in every spec sheet. The practical consequence: if the trailer you are borrowing has no brakes, the size of your 4WD is irrelevant. A LandCruiser and a Corolla are both capped at the same 750kg.

The variant decides, not the badge

This is the single most expensive assumption in towing. Two cars wearing the same nameplate at the same dealership can differ by nearly double.

Figures as recorded in our database from each manufacturer's published Australian specifications where available. Prices are RRP before on-road costs. Always confirm against the spec sheet for the exact build you are buying.

A front-drive RAV4 tows 800kg. Add all-wheel drive to the same GX grade and it tows 1,500kg. A Sorento diesel tows 2,000kg while the plug-in hybrid version, which costs $16,500 more, tows 1,010kg. Buy the badge and you can end up with half the capability you paid for.

The GCM squeeze: why you cannot use both maximums

This is the trap that catches experienced tow-vehicle owners, not beginners. Gross combination mass caps the whole rig, and on most vehicles it is set below the sum of the GVM and the tow rating. We measured it across the catalogue: of the 634 on-sale cars that publish GVM, GCM and a braked tow rating together, 295 of them, just under half, have a GVM plus tow rating that exceeds their own GCM, with a median shortfall of 400kg. Narrow it to the 3,500kg-rated vehicles people actually buy for caravans and it is 127 of 214, same median.

Figures as recorded in our database from each manufacturer's published Australian specifications where available. "Shortfall" is GVM plus braked tow rating minus GCM.

Read the D-Max row carefully. Its plate says 3,100kg GVM and its brochure says 3,500kg braked. Both are true, and you still cannot have both, because 3,100 plus 3,500 is 6,600 against a 6,000kg GCM. Hitch a van at the full rating and the GCM, not the GVM, is now the number governing what you may put in the ute. The Prado and the Patrol are the pleasant exceptions: their GCMs are set so the two plated maximums add up exactly, which is why they have the reputation they do among people who tow near capacity.

The tow ball can bind before the tow rating does

Of the 1,013 on-sale cars in our database that publish a tow-ball download limit, 560 are set at exactly 10 per cent of the braked rating, which lines up neatly with the regulators' 5 to 10 per cent loading advice. But 364 are set below 10 per cent, and on those the ball limit is the real constraint. A Mazda CX-3 is rated to tow 1,200kg but only 50kg on the ball, which is 4.2 per cent. Load that trailer the way NSW and WA describe, at 5 to 10 per cent nose weight, and you are past the ball limit long before you are near the tow rating. The Kia Sportage diesel has the same shape of problem: 1,900kg braked, 100kg on the ball. Both figures are as recorded in our database, so confirm them against the spec sheet for your own build before you load up.

Kerb weight, tare mass and the subtraction you should not do

The most common piece of bad towing advice on the internet is to work out what you can carry by subtracting a weight you found online from the GVM. Do not do it. Kerb weight and tare mass are different measurements taken with different amounts of fluid on board, and they are not interchangeable. Only 214 of our on-sale rows publish both figures, which tells you how inconsistently manufacturers report them, and the gap between the two varies wildly from one car to the next.

The figure that matters is the one on your vehicle's compliance plate and in your handbook, and beyond that, the reading on a weighbridge with your actual gear in the back. A rig loaded from a brochure is a rig loaded from an assumption.

When the number simply is not published

Worth knowing before you go looking: a lot of the time, the figure you need does not exist in public. Of the 1,160 on-sale cars in our database rated to tow something on a braked trailer, 499 publish no GCM at all, 455 publish no payload figure, and 160 publish no tow-ball limit. You cannot run the GCM check on a car whose maker never printed a GCM.

That is the honest answer, and it is the one our planner gives. A rig where none of the three limits could be checked comes back as "unknown", not "fine". If the maker has not published the number, your options are the handbook, the dealer, or a weighbridge, in that order, and it is worth doing before you commit to a van.

The 60-second pre-trip check

• Check your licence stage first. If you are on L or P plates, the state table above decides whether the rest of this even applies to you, and your home state's rule follows you interstate.
• Find the trailer's ATM on its plate, not in the ad. That is the number every limit is measured against.
• No brakes on the trailer? You stop at 750kg. No exceptions, no matter what you are driving.
• Check the GCM, not just the tow rating. Of the cars that publish all three numbers, just under half cannot use their full GVM and full tow rating together. Plenty of others publish no GCM at all, which is not the same as being in the clear.
• Check the ball limit as a number, not a percentage. On a third of the cars that publish a ball limit, it binds before the tow rating does.
• Two chains over 2,500kg, crossed. One below it. A breakaway system over 2,000kg GTM.
• Weigh it once. A single weighbridge visit with the van loaded the way you actually pack it is worth more than every calculator on the internet, ours included.

If you are still choosing the vehicle rather than the trailer, start from the numbers rather than the reputation. Our TowingSorted planner will model any car in our catalogue against your real rig, our towing-vehicle guide ranks the tow leaders by class, and our plain-English explainer unpacks what each of the five plated numbers actually means.