Edit vehicle and trailer ratings

The numbers on your compliance plate are the limits every safety check in loadmate is measured against. If one of them is wrong — a digit transposed when you first set up, or a figure that has changed because you fitted a new towbar or had the rig re-plated — every check that depends on it is quietly measuring against the wrong line. This page shows you how to put a rating right, and just as importantly, when you should and should not touch one. Editing a rating is not a way to tune your score. It changes the limits loadmate uses for the whole rig, so it should only ever match the plate, label, manual, or weighbridge ticket the figure came from. You copy the number; your plate stays the authority.

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Find the vehicle or trailer

Open your garage and tap the vehicle or trailer you want to update. That opens the asset’s profile. From there, choose the section that holds the value you need to correct:

• Edit specs for the legal rating numbers — the loaded vehicle limit, the combined limit, braked towing capacity, axle limits, the trailer’s loaded limit, and the maximum coupling load.
• Edit baseline weight for the empty starting weight loadmate begins from before it adds passengers, cargo, accessories, trailer load, and coupling load.

The labels you see are written for your region, so enter each figure exactly as it reads on your local plate or paperwork.

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Field guide for common mix-ups

The acronyms blur together, and the same document often carries half a dozen of them. Use this table to put each figure where it belongs — and, just as important, where it does not. If a value is printed on a trailer plate, use it for the trailer. If it is printed on a vehicle plate or in the vehicle manual, use it for the tow vehicle. If a seller’s brochure disagrees with the plate, treat the plate as the figure to trust.

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Edit specifications

Open Edit specs when a legal rating number is wrong or incomplete. The form arrives pre-filled with what you saved before, so change only the fields that need correcting and leave the rest alone. For a tow vehicle, the specs form covers:

• Loaded vehicle limit — GVM in Australia, MAM in the UK, GVWR in the US and Europe/international. Required.
• Combined vehicle and trailer limit — GCM in Australia, GTW in the UK, GCWR in the US and Europe/international. Required. loadmate will not accept a combined limit lower than the vehicle’s own loaded limit, because the combination can never legally weigh less than the vehicle alone.
• Braked towing capacity. Required.
• Maximum coupling load — tow ball mass, nose weight, or tongue weight. Marked Recommended: optional, but worth adding if your plate lists it.
• Front and rear axle limits. Optional, tucked under an expandable Axle limits section.

For a trailer, the form covers the trailer’s loaded limit (ATM, MTPLM, Trailer GVWR, or GTWR) as the required figure, the maximum coupling load, and — under an optional section — the axle group limit, plus the gross trailer mass (GTM) for Australian rigs that show it. Front and rear axle limits are optional, but they earn their keep. A vehicle can sit comfortably under its total loaded limit while one axle is overloaded — it happens with passengers, heavy rear storage, accessories, or coupling load, even when the overall figure still looks fine. If your plate prints the axle limits, adding them lets loadmate catch that. If a field is not printed on your plate, label, manual, or towbar source, leave it blank and go and find the right source rather than guessing a number. Wheelbase and hitch-overhang measurements are not entered on this form.

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Edit a tow vehicle’s starting weight

Open Edit baseline weight when the empty starting weight needs adding or correcting. This is the weight loadmate begins from before it adds people, cargo, accessories, trailer load, and coupling load — so if it drifts, every load and compliance check downstream of it drifts too. The tow vehicle’s baseline form has two tabs, and you pick the one that matches what you actually have. Use Factory when you are working from the manufacturer’s published kerb, curb, tare, or unladen weight. Check whether that published weight already includes fuel. If it does not, turn Fuel included in weight off and enter the fuel type and tank capacity. loadmate then adds the fuel weight to the starting point for you, so your empty figure is honest rather than a litre short. Use Weighed when you have a measured weight from a weighbridge or a professional mobile weighing service. If your ticket gives separate front and rear axle weights, leave Do you have axle weights? turned on and enter them directly. Direct axle weights make your axle checks far more useful, because loadmate knows exactly where the empty weight sits over each axle. If the ticket gives only the total vehicle weight, turn Do you have axle weights? off and let loadmate use a percentage split until you can get the axles measured. The percentage split is an estimate. It is better than leaving the axle split unknown, but it does not replace a measured front and rear result. The weighed total is real; the split is loadmate’s best guess until a weighbridge gives you the true one.

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Edit a trailer’s starting weight

A trailer’s Edit baseline weight form is laid out differently from the tow vehicle’s, because what matters for a trailer is how its empty weight divides between the coupling and its axles — not a front and rear axle split. There is no “Do you have axle weights?” toggle here. You still choose between two tabs at the top:

• Factory when you are working from the trailer manufacturer’s published tare, unladen, or MiRO weight.
• Weighed when you have a measured trailer weight from a weighbridge or mobile weighing service, with the date it was taken.

Underneath the weight you entered, a second toggle decides how loadmate works out the coupling (ball) weight:

• Enter Weight when you know the exact tow ball, nose, or tongue weight at the empty trailer’s coupling — for example from a ball-weight scale. You type that figure in, and loadmate shows it as a percentage of the trailer’s weight so you can sanity-check it.
• Estimate % when you do not have a measured coupling weight. You drag a slider to set the tongue weight as a percentage of the trailer’s weight, and loadmate works out the coupling load and the axle-group load from it.

Whichever way you set the coupling weight, loadmate shows a small preview of the calculated tongue weight and axle-group weight so you can confirm the numbers look right before you save.

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What happens when you save

There is no extra “recalculate?” prompt on the specs and baseline forms. When you save, loadmate quietly rebuilds the compliance limits from your new figures and marks your Rig Score as needing a refresh. The next time you open the Rig tab, it works out a fresh score against the corrected numbers. So a corrected rating or starting weight can move your score up or down, and that is exactly what should happen. The score is not punishing you for editing; it is showing you a truer picture of the rig now that the limits match your documents. If the Rig tab shows a new warning or a missing-data line, open it to see what the change affected and what to do next.

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Units follow your region

You type figures in the units you already use. If your region is set to imperial, the fields read and accept pounds, and loadmate converts to its internal store for you; if your region is metric, you work in kilograms. You never do the maths yourself — enter the number as your plate or ticket prints it, in the unit shown beside the field, and loadmate handles the rest.

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Keep a note of the source

loadmate stores the rating or weight value, not the document it came from. Keep your own record of where each figure originated — a photo of the compliance plate, the towbar label, the specification sheet, or the weighbridge ticket. If a figure is ever questioned, that photo is your evidence. loadmate is not the source of truth for a rating. The figure on your plate, label, manufacturer’s documents, or measured ticket is. loadmate holds the value so it can run your checks against it, and warns you when the rig is approaching a limit — but it is your plate that draws the line.

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Try it now

Open one of your saved assets, go to Edit specs, and confirm each rating still matches your compliance plate or source document. Then open Edit baseline weight and check whether the starting weight is factory-based or measured. Correct anything that has drifted, save, and return to the Rig tab to see the refreshed score.

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Where to go next