Five things to get right for towing on sand

Dave Darmody, owner and lead trainer of Australian Offroad Academy offers up some great tips for towing on sand.

Now, I might be a little biased, living with a view of K’gari and fortunate enough to be a regular visitor for work and for play. But I’m pretty confident that sand would be a big part of many of my favourite offroad trip memories. Beach driving certainly offers a sense of freedom and opens up opportunities for a whole range of family fun.

Towing your trailer on sand ‘up the beach’, be that a compact camper or your bunk bed family caravan, can definitely make your stay a bit more comfortable. Not to mention let you spend more time enjoying the sunshine with the kids. It can also go not quite so well for the unprepared.

Let’s think positively about towing on sand though. Here are five things to get right to help you have a sand-driving holiday to remember for all of the right reasons. While this list will focus on beaches, some of these tips transfer to sand in other places (catch my note about deserts down the bottom).

Get the tides right

I do hate to say it, but some weeks just don’t work for a trouble-free run up the beach at a convenient time. There are weekend arrival days that start with a just before dawn high tide, giving you a low sometime around lunchtime. This is just perfect for towing your way up the beach on the sand in search of the perfect campsite, confident in the knowledge that the beach only gets better and better all morning.

Naturally, if you can’t pick and choose your holiday week you’ll need to just work with what you’ve got. The simple fact is that you can’t beat the tides. Sometimes you just need to hold off on your beach entry until the tide works for you.

Be reasonable

Offroad vans and trailers are not all created equal. Some are just not intended to be towed through soft and snaky inland tracks on the sand. Likewise, some will handle it all with ease. Set yourself up for success by taking on a reasonable level of challenge.

Take a couple of mates

There’s a great sense of confidence in knowing that you’ve got a buddy nearby to help you out of a tight spot. Or better yet, to prevent you from finding yourself in one to start with. An extra set of eyes helping you to pick the best lines when towing in the sand or just to offer a bit of help when backing up might just make all the difference.

Get your head around your tyres

If you’ve been doing loads of sand driving then you’ll already have a reasonable idea of what tyre pressures are effective in different conditions. We just need to factor in the effect of the trailer on this. Remember that the whole point of dropping tyre pressure on sand is to spread the mass of the vehicle (and towing trailer) over a larger footprint.

Bearing in mind that even though our sidewalls might look ‘baggy’, they aren’t truly indicative of our tyre footprint. When we drop pressure we are making our tyres longer, not wider. Now, once we add an extra axle or two we need to just think a little differently…

Matchy matchy

If the point of changing tyre pressure is to spread out the mass and the mass isn’t necessarily evenly distributed around the axles, then there is not going to be one single pressure that works. Your van will transfer more weight than normal to your rear axle, so let’s focus there. If you already have a good idea of the pressure that works for you, then let’s go straight to the back axle and get that pressure set.

What we’ll find is that we have a bigger footprint. By that I mean that the tyre is more squashed, because of the weight of the trailer. Now, measure that footprint length (slide a stick in from the front and the back and measure the difference). Our objective now for sand towing is to make every other tyre the same. If you have six tyres of the same size and all six have the same footprint, you’ve quite efficiently spread your total load out as best as you possibly could. However …

Tip 1. Don’t get attached to those numbers. If the conditions change, you need to be prepared to change your pressure (and footprint) to match.

Tip 2. If you’re leaving more than a tread depth impression on firm sand when towing, your pressures are too high.

Tip 3. Momentum is not your friend. Certainly there are times and places where you may find the need to carry more speed than is perfect at the bottom of a hill, in order to still have some left at the top. However, this does not mean that we are swapping skill and preparation for speed and wheelspin. Spinning wheels are literally the reason you get bogged. Our aim is always to match wheel speed with ground speed. There is absolutely nothing wrong with selecting low range on the beach.

Desert sand

There are a bunch of deserts and they are all unique. Some are stony by name and some are just lots and lots of sand. The authorities ask for trailers not to be towed across the Simpson Desert. They have good reasons. I know it’s not impossible and I’ve been in convos that included trailers. Some more problematic than others. And there is always another video or story of someone ‘conquering’ something by dragging their house behind them.

It really can’t be argued that towing a trailer does no damage to the sand tracks. Perhaps an unpopular position for some but for me, maybe the desert needs you to get closer to nature and roll out a swag or pop up a tent.