Improve your Rig Score

Your Rig Score lives on the Rig tab, the app’s home screen. The way to lift it is to improve the real things behind it, then let the score catch up. You do not need a formula, and you do not need to chase a particular number. Almost every improvement is ordinary setup work: move a load, give a load a home, top up a tank reading, log a service you have done, record a professional weigh-in, or update your coupling-weight reading. Make the change, save it, and the next time you open the Rig tab the score is brought up to date against everything you have changed since you last looked. This page is the action guide: where to start, what to do in each area, and why each action helps in plain terms. If your score has just moved and you want to work out what caused it, that is a different question — see My Rig Score changed - why?.

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Start with the lowest grade cell

Under the score gauge sits the grade strip: four cells — Compliance, Stability, Health, and Confidence — each with its own letter grade you can read at a glance. Start with the lowest cell. That is where there is the most to gain, and where your effort goes furthest. Tap that cell. It does one of two things. If the cell is held back by setup you have not finished, it opens a short sheet that takes you straight to the fix. If the cell is scoring but low, it opens a breakdown that names what is pulling it down. Either way, a low grade is a signposted next step, never a dead end. To read what each line in a breakdown means, see The score breakdown. When your rig is set up enough to score, the Rig tab can also show a single next action beneath the gauge, naming the highest-impact step for you right now. If that line appears, it is the simplest place to begin; otherwise, work down the grade strip from the lowest cell.

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Improve compliance

Compliance is the legal-limit side of the score: your loaded vehicle and trailer limits — GVM (AU) / MAM (UK) / GVWR (US and Europe/international), the trailer limit ATM (AU) / MTPLM (UK) / Trailer GVWR (US) / GTWR (Europe/international), the combined GCM (AU) / Gross Train Weight (UK) / GCWR (US and Europe/international), each axle, and the coupling load. A low compliance grade means the rig is sitting close to a limit, over one, or that a limit cannot be checked because a rating or a weight is missing. Three ordinary fixes move it:

• Take off weight you do not need for this trip. Less weight means more room under every limit, so brakes, suspension and tyres all work with margin to spare instead of at their edge. This is the quickest win when a total is tight.
• Redistribute weight off whatever is tight. If one axle or the coupling is the problem, the answer is often to move a heavy item rather than remove it. Shifting a load between zones, or between the vehicle and the trailer while hitched, changes where the weight presses down across the axles and the tow ball. Use the preview before you commit so you can see the effect first.
• Correct the numbers. A wrong plate rating or an out-of-date weight can make compliance look worse — or falsely better — than the truth. Check the rating values you typed against the figures stamped on your vehicle and trailer plates, and fix any that drifted.

To see exactly which check is tight before you start, open the Compliance Snapshot. It lists every weight, every limit, and the margin left on each, so you move the right item the first time. For how a single load change ripples across the checks, see Review load changes.

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Improve stability

Stability is about how the rig will behave on the road — whether it tracks straight, steers cleanly, and resists sway. A rig can be inside every weight limit and still score low here, because staying under the limits says nothing about a snaking caravan or a tow vehicle that has gone light at the front. The everyday fixes are about where the weight sits, not how much:

• Keep heavy gear low and near the axles. Weight stacked high, or pushed out to the front or back of the trailer, acts like a pendulum: it swings and feeds sway even when the totals are fine. Move the heavy items down low and in towards the axle line, and the rig settles.
• Give every load a home. A load you have added but not yet placed in a zone cannot be worked into the balance, so it holds the whole stability picture back. Assign each item to a storage location. If the stability cell shows a caution, its breakdown usually takes you straight to the items still waiting to be placed.
• Mind the tow-ball balance. Too little weight pressing down on the ball lets a tail-heavy trailer start to wag the car — the classic recipe for sway. Too much lifts the vehicle’s nose, lightens the steering and squats the rear. There is a sweet spot: move heavy items forward to add coupling weight, rearward to ease it.

In solo mode (no trailer), stability reads the vehicle’s own load: how high it sits, how it splits front to rear, and what is up on the roof. Roof weight is the worst place for stability because it raises the centre of gravity most, so move heavy gear inside and low whenever you can. A good ball-weight figure on its own does not rescue poor loading — loadmate will still hold stability down if the heavy items are badly placed, because the physics does not care that one number looks tidy. To set up the zones that make placement possible, see Set up storage zones.

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Improve health

Health covers service status and tyre condition. It counts in both solo and hitched modes, so keeping it current is worth doing whether or not you are towing this week. Two kinds of entry move it:

• Tyre details. Add each tyre profile and keep its age, load rating, and pressure current. Rubber hardens and cracks with age regardless of tread, and an overloaded tyre overheats — both end in the blowouts that cause most towing trouble. Entering the dates and ratings is what lets the score reflect the tyres you actually run. See Set up tyre profiles and Pressure and load.
• Service records. Log services as you do them, so scheduled work and history stay current. Overdue brakes, bearings and fluids are exactly the parts that fail under towing strain, so a service that loadmate can see counts towards health. See Service & Tasks.

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Improve confidence

Confidence is a separate read on how complete and trustworthy your data is, and it scales the score you see. When confidence is low, the headline number is pulled down honestly rather than padded over — it is loadmate admitting it does not yet have a full picture of your rig, not a mark against your towing. The reward is the other way round: as you fill the picture in, the displayed score lifts visibly, because the true number is finally allowed to show through. For what each confidence badge word means, see What is the Rig Score. You lift confidence by closing the gaps:

• Record a professional weigh-in. A measured reading is the single strongest thing you can add. It replaces estimates with real numbers and sets a known-good baseline for everything that follows. See Record a weigh-in.
• Set a baseline weight for the vehicle and, when hitched, the trailer, so every later calculation starts from something solid.
• Complete the plate values rather than leaving rating fields blank.
• Configure your storage zones so loads have somewhere to sit and can be counted.
• Keep fill levels current for tanks, gas, and consumables, so the weight you carry on the day matches what is really on board.

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When the right answer is a professional weigh-in

Sometimes no amount of editing fixes the real problem, because your figures are still estimates underneath. A professional weigh-in — at a weighbridge, truck scale, or with a mobile weigher — is the right next step when changes have built up enough to matter: after you have added or removed a lot of gear, reconfigured the rig, or moved heavy items between the vehicle and the trailer. A fresh weighbridge reading resets your baseline, so every comparison after it starts from real numbers again. It is also the biggest single lift to confidence, which is why a low confidence cell often points here first. To capture one, see Record a weigh-in; to read the result, see Read a weigh-in report.

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When the right answer is only a tow-ball reading

If the only thing that has changed is your coupling load, you do not need a full weigh-in. A single reading from a ball scale — tow ball mass (AU) / nose weight (UK) / tongue weight (US) — can be entered on its own. It updates the trailer’s coupling weight and the compliance and stability that depend on it, and the next Rig view recalculates. This is the practical at-home check between weighbridge visits. Because it is just the one reading and does not account for all your loads, it updates the coupling weight without creating a professional weigh-in record and without resetting your weighbridge baseline. For the full steps, see Update tow-ball weight.

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Acknowledge without hiding

Some safety alerts cannot be dismissed, because the condition still matters while it is live. If one of those cards offers Understood, tapping it tells loadmate you have seen it. The card goes quieter and drops to the bottom of its group, but it stays visible — and the score does not change. Use Understood when you cannot fix something right away but do not want the same card shouting while you work through the rest of the screen. If the underlying problem gets worse, the alert returns to full urgency. Hard legal-limit failures do not offer Understood, because those are the ones to act on before you tow. You can review acknowledged, dismissed, and snoozed alert actions later in Activity and alerts.

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A quick way to begin