MOVING GUIDES How much can a 3.5 tonne van carry? The payload sum

Start at 3,500 kg, the legal maximum for the whole vehicle, and take off everything that is already on board before your first box.

• The van with its body, empty: about 2,300 kg for a long curtain-sided van.
• The driver: 75 to 95 kg.
• The driver's own things for a week on the road, bedding, food, water, clothes and tools: 30 to 60 kg.
• A full tank of diesel: 65 to 90 kg.
• The sleeping pod above the cab: about 50 kg.
• Straps, blankets and a sack truck: 30 to 50 kg.
• What is left for your belongings: about 850 to 950 kg.

Every van is different, and a light one does better than the one above. But a weight allowance that starts from the empty van and forgets the person driving it is a brochure figure. In that sum the gap between the brochure and the road is about 300 kg, which is four washing machines.

A customer moving from London to Switzerland picked his van from a photo we had sent him. I wrote back that the photo only shows size. His weight limit was the same whichever van arrived, and the larger the van, the lower its weight capacity tends to be in practice. A longer body is a heavier body, so the van with the most room often has the least weight to give.

Household belongings packed for a move weigh roughly 100 kg for every cubic metre. Fill a large van to the roof at that rate and it carries about twice its legal load. That is why we ask for the weight of your inventory and not only its volume. Our guide on why weight decides what fits explains how your route gets its limit.

Across Europe, the police weigh vans this size at borders and on motorways. The fine is usually small. In Germany the standard fine for a van of this class tops out at €235. The part that matters to you comes after the fine. The van does not move until the extra weight is off it.

In Britain an overloaded van gets an immediate prohibition, and the officers can send it somewhere nearby to have load taken off. In France the police can hold a van more than 5% over its limit where it stands. And in our experience the Swiss check vans as they enter, which is what I told that customer next: an overweight van pays a fine, and it does not leave until the excess has moved onto another van.

The fine is the driver's and the operator's. The consequences are yours. It is your belongings that come off at a roadside, wait for a second van and go through two sets of hands, and it is your delivery day that moves. Before you book with anyone, find the line in the contract that says who pays for that second van.

You will not be standing at the weighbridge, so ask before you book. A mover who knows the answers gives them quickly.

• What does the van weigh empty, and may I see its registration document or a weighbridge ticket?
• Does that weight include the driver, the driver's own kit and a full tank?
• What is my weight allowance, and how did you work it out?
• Who checks the weight of my inventory before loading day?
• If a check finds the van overweight, who pays for the second vehicle, and where do my things wait?
• Does the operator hold an international operator's licence, and does the van carry a tachograph? Vans this size need both to carry goods for hire across EU borders.

Your route's page publishes its weight limit, and your quote confirms it. We check your inventory against it before we assign a van, and we do not accept a list that is over the limit. You hear that from us before loading day, with two ways forward: take items off the list, or move up a size at the price already locked when you booked. Our packing guide tells, once and in full, what happens when a load turns out heavier than its list.

Once we confirm your van, we email you the driver's name and the van's registration. We record what each van weighs as it runs, with its driver in it. So if you ask us the six questions above, you get six answers.

None of this is clever. It is a sum, done before loading day and not at a weighbridge.