Q I am shortly to purchase a tractive unit X to
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demonstrate at vintage commercial vehicle rallies; it was built in 1944. I also intend to use it to pull a trailer carrying a traction engine.
As it is purely a tractive unit, it is surely not an hgv as it does not carry goods itself.
The vehicle is 8ft 5in. wide. So does it qualify for heavy goods vehicles plating regulations exemptions as being a specially constructed vehicle? I am under the impression that all vehicles over 8ft 3-11n. wide do in fact qualify for this exemption. Is this correct?
On the other hand, if the vehicle was classed as a breakdown vehicle, how would plating regulations affect it then? What equipment would it need to qualky it as a breakdown vehicle?
A Section 190(9) of the Road Traffic Act
1972 states that where a motor vehicle is so constructed that a trailer may by partial superimposition be attached to the vehicle in such a manner as to cause a substantial part of the weight of the trailer to be borne by the vehicle, that vehicle shall be deemed to be a vehicle itself constructed to carry a load. That means that the tractive unit which you describe is a heavy goods vehicle.
There is no provision in the Goods Vehicles (Plating and Testing) Regulations 1971 to exempt the vehicle from the Regulations according to the use to which you intend to put it. The maximum permitted width for heavy motor cars, into which category your vehicle falls, is 2.5 metres (8ft 2in.) according to the Motor Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations 1973.
Schedule 2, paragraph 3, of the Goods Vehicles (Plating and Testing) Regulations 1971 provides exemption for breakdown vehicles. In this context, a breakdown vehicle is a motor vehicle on which there is mounted apparatus designed for raising a disabled vehicle wholly or partly from the ground or for drawing a disabled vehicle when so raised and which is not used for the conveyance of goods other than a disabled vehicle wholly raised by that apparatus and which carries no other load than articles required for the operation of, or in connection with, that apparatus or otherwise for dealing with disabled vehicles.
The emphasis in all this is on the recovery of disabled vehicles and it is difficult to reconcile this with the conveyance of a traction engine, presumably to and from rallies, no matter what equipment is fitted to the tractive unit.