Can My Van Do This? Our Rig-Rating System Explained

"Can my van do this?" is the question behind every track page on this site, and it's the one that saves rigs and marriages. So we built a rating system to answer it honestly, because "it's a bit rough" means nothing when one bloke's van is a purpose-built off-road tourer and the next is a family pop-top that's never left the bitumen. Every track and trail we cover carries two labels: a rig rating from 1 to 5, and a caravan suitability category. Here's exactly what they mean and how we work them out, so you can read a track page and back yourself.

The 1 to 5 rig rating

The number is our overall difficulty grade for towing a van, where 1 is a sealed cruise and 5 is serious remote off-road that will punish anything not built for it. It's a blend, not a single measurement, because a track can be easy underfoot but brutal for its remoteness, or short but savage.

The caravan suitability categories

The number tells you how hard. The category tells you what kind of van belongs there at all, which is often the more useful of the two.

• any_van: sealed or good formed roads. A standard road-going caravan or pop-top is fine with normal care. No off-road build needed.
• off_road_van: the surface demands a purpose-built off-road van, meaning a properly braced chassis, off-road coupling, protected plumbing and suspension that can take sustained corrugations. Take a road van here and you'll shake it apart.
• camper_only: too rough, tight or exposed for a hard-walled van, but a rugged off-road camper trailer or hybrid can make it. The full van stays behind.
• no_vans: leave the van at a base camp and take the tug only. Water crossings, deep sand, or track so tight and technical that towing anything is a bad idea.

The category is deliberately blunt because the failure mode is expensive. There's no shame in a no_vans rating; the smart play on a track like the Cape York Telegraph Track is often to base the van somewhere secure and tackle the technical bits light.

To place your own van against a category, be honest about three things: its build (is the chassis, coupling and plumbing genuinely made for corrugations, or is it a road van with mud-tyre stickers), its clearance and length (a long, low, tail-heavy van grounds out where a short, high one strolls through), and your own recovery ability (can you get yourself unstuck, or are you relying on someone driving past). A well-built off-road van driven by someone who carries recovery gear and knows how to use it can lean into the harder end of its category. A borderline van driven by someone who's never aired down should sit a notch below where the plate suggests. The category tells you what belongs there; your honesty about your rig and yourself tells you whether you belong in the category.

How we actually assess a track

Four things drive the rating, and we weigh each one.

Surface. Sealed, formed gravel, rough rock, or soft sand. Sand and rock both push a track up the scale fast, because sand demands momentum and clearance and rock threatens the underside of a van.

Corrugations. The quiet killer. It's not one big obstacle, it's a thousand kilometres of vibration finding every weak weld, loose bolt and cheap cabinet. A road can be a 2 for a well-built off-road van and a rig-wrecker for a road van purely on sustained corrugations, which is why airing down matters so much; our guide to tyre pressures for corrugations is half the answer to surviving a 3 or a 4.

Clearance and obstacles. Washaways, steep pinches, rutted entries and exits, and the lowest-hanging thing on your van. We note where clearance and departure angle actually bite, because that's what grounds a van out.

Water crossings. Any water crossing lifts a track hard, because depth changes with the season and a wet interior or a flooded wheel bearing ends a trip. If a track has genuine crossings, it's rarely below a 4 and often a no_vans for the crossing itself.

Where the ratings come from

A grade is only worth the judgement behind it, so here's how ours are set rather than guessed. Each track's rating comes from a mix of first-hand travel by people who've actually towed it, published conditions from the relevant state road and parks authorities, and the pattern of what breaks and what gets through. We lean deliberately conservative. If a track sits on the line between a 3 and a 4, we call it a 4, because the cost of under-rating (a wrecked van a long way from a mechanic) is far worse than the cost of over-rating (you took a slightly easier run than you could have). A rating that errs toward caution is one you can trust to keep you out of trouble.

We also separate difficulty from remoteness on purpose, because they're different risks. A short, technical climb close to town is survivable if it goes wrong; a dead-easy formed road five hundred kilometres from the nearest help, with no phone signal and no traffic, carries its own weight in the number even though the surface is tame. Self-sufficiency, water, recovery gear and communications matter more the further out you are, which is why a track's isolation nudges its rating up regardless of how the ground feels under the tyres. Two tracks with the same surface can sit a full point apart purely on how far you'd be from a tow truck when it counts.

Reading a track page

Every trail page shows the rig rating and the suitability category up top, then the detail behind them: surface type, how bad the corrugations get, remoteness and where the nearest help is, and any water or clearance traps. Read the category first (is my kind of van even meant to be here), then the number (how hard), then the detail (what specifically will test me). If the page says off_road_van and you're towing a road-going pop-top, believe it. We'd rather cop the disappointment than the tow-truck bill.

A worked example of how the two labels combine: a track marked "rig rating 3, off_road_van" is telling you it's rough gravel and sustained corrugations that a purpose-built off-road van will handle with airing down and a steady pace, but that a standard road van shouldn't attempt no matter how confident the driver is. A "rig rating 5, no_vans" track is saying leave the caravan behind entirely and take the tug, because the surface or the water crossings will end a van's day. The number and the category answer different questions, and you need both to make the call. If your van's build sits between categories, treat the tougher reading as the honest one and plan for it, rather than talking yourself into the softer interpretation because you've driven a long way to get there.

Two honest caveats. First, conditions change: a graded road after rain becomes a bog, and a rating is a fair-weather guide, not a promise, so always check current conditions with the relevant state road authority before you commit. Second, the rating assumes a rig loaded legally and set up properly, because an overloaded van fails on ground a legal one shrugs off, which is why we point you at towing weights explained and, before you even buy, how to choose an off-road caravan. Match your van honestly to the category, respect the number, read the detail, and "can my van do this" stops being a gamble. Start with the trails hub and filter to what your rig is actually built for.