Most wrong load in a vehicle, what've you done you really shouldn't..

[Kringle]

Ordered half a dozen massive pizzas for my mates one evening and claimed I'd pick them up on my motorbike.

Subsequently forgot I'd left the top box hundreds of miles away at home and had to ride a Honda Deuville on a duel carriageway whilst holding in my hand a black bag with six pizzas in it.

I cannot count the amount of times I nearly met the big guy upstairs.

Does that count?

[comfortablynumb]

4 hours ago, Kringle said:

Does that count?

Oh yes! 🥺

[sierraman]

6x8 greenhouse on the roof.  Disassembled and glass out obviously. 

[Metal Guru]

Not technically overloaded, but 7 big rugby players (average at least 16 st) in a 7 seater Peugeot 504 estate. We ran out of petrol on a dual carriageway going along at 70 but had enough momentum to roll a couple of miles into the nearest town and ground to a halt just 100 yards from a petrol station.

[Rustybullethole]

42 minutes ago, Metal Guru said:

Not technically overloaded, but 7 big rugby players (average at least 16 st) in a 7 seater Peugeot 504 estate. We ran out of petrol on a dual carriageway going along at 70 but had enough momentum to roll a couple of miles into the nearest town and ground to a halt just 100 yards from a petrol station.

Lucky you had the facilities to scrum that pug the last 100 yards too.

[Metal Guru]

2 hours ago, Rustybullethole said:

Lucky you had the facilities to scrum that pug the last 100 yards too.

Fastest it had accelerated in years when we stated pushing!

[comfortablynumb]

6 hours ago, Metal Guru said:

Not technically overloaded, but 7 big rugby players (average at least 16 st) in a 7 seater Peugeot 504 estate. We ran out of petrol on a dual carriageway going along at 70 but had enough momentum to roll a couple of miles into the nearest town and ground to a halt just 100 yards from a petrol station.

I was coming back from the shops in my RRC when we lived in WGC, when a group of American football players in full attire hitchhiking stopped me.

Turned out the group of 8 were doing one of those charity 'how far can you get with no money?' competitions, needed a lift to panshanger aerodrome where a mate was collecting them in a light plane.

I got all 8 in, with one in the child seat in the rear seat.

Great bunch of blokes, would overstuff car for again 😁

[Homersimpson]

I once strapped a sheet of 8x4 18mm plywood to the roof of my X-Type Jag without a roof rack by opening all the windows, passing straps through and then climbing through the drivers window.

Also I transported the front and rear of a 10ft wide shed in a 5ft trailer with 5ft sticking out the back towed behind my 1.4 Fiesta, only on 50mph max roads (doing no more than 40mph) but the tail was definitely wagging the dog and by the time I got to my destiation the trailer box had broken its back and the shed was dragging the floor.

[robt100]

19 hours ago, Kringle said:

Ordered half a dozen massive pizzas for my mates one evening and claimed I'd pick them up on my motorbike.

Subsequently forgot I'd left the top box hundreds of miles away at home and had to ride a Honda Deuville on a duel carriageway whilst holding in my hand a black bag with six pizzas in it.

I cannot count the amount of times I nearly met the big guy upstairs.

Does that count?

Sounds very similar to a friend of mine who bought a load of steak to cook for his mates (he worked at some posh restaurant/hotel so had his sources for decent grub). Went to pick it up on his motorbike, stuck it all in 4 carrier bags, then hang them off the handlebars 🙈
Then on the way back whilst driving through the village before his, rounded a bend to find mud had been left by a tractor....
The steaks were lovely and tender by the time he got home! 🫣🤣

[New POD]

I once strapped 4 off 6 x 6 fence panels onto the roof of an Citroën AX using a washing line secured to the grab handles inside. 

I took the rear seat out in 2 prices and used them.to protect the paint.

I had to get in via the window as the washing line went through the window..

Only had to drive 1/2 mile. 

I once placed a piece of carpet on the roof of a Honda accord. And then placed a Bini bonnet upside down on top and used multiple rachet straps through the rear door windows, the sun roof (carefully closing it) and over the boot lid down to the chassis in front of the rear bumper. 

I then drove from Hinkley to Merseyside at speeds ranging up to 100 mph. About 150 miles. 

[Young Steve]

Does carrying a boxed. close coupled toilet 

on the passenger seat of an MGB roadster with the hood up count for anything? 

[Bradders59]

About 15 years ago I towed an Omega on an A frame behind my own Omega, which had a broken rear spring, from Wembley to my house, which is about 65 miles.

Luckily it was early on a Sunday morning, as at one point I  had to use all three lanes of the A12 near Chelmsford to get the whole thing under control and back in a straight line.

That would have been a great cure for constipation, if I happened to be suffering from it at the time. 

 

About 35 years ago I was sent in the company VW pickup truck to collect a pallet of OPC from the local building supplier about 3 miles away.

I didnt know the weight limit of the pickup truck was a ton and a half, the same as one pallet, so told the forklift driver at the supplier to put two pallets on.

It started to dawn on me on the way back when I went over a little bridge where the road bears slightly to the righ just after, when I noticed the steering didnt seem to be doing very much.

Then, as I turned right into the industrial park I worked at, the truck went up on two wheels and seemed to hang there for an eternity, before making up its mind to come back down rather than tip over.

After I had hand balled lots of 50kg bags of cement back onto the truck, I drove the last mile very gingerly back to the yard.

[reb]

On 19/01/2026 at 11:04, Metal Guru said:

Not technically overloaded, but 7 big rugby players (average at least 16 st) in a 7 seater Peugeot 504 estate. We ran out of petrol on a dual carriageway going along at 70 but had enough momentum to roll a couple of miles into the nearest town and ground to a halt just 100 yards from a petrol station.

Over a decade ago when I was a student I worked as a rickshaw rider. The trikes we used were designed for two passengers, but we were licensed to carry three. All of the trikes in the city were originally built by the same company, but the different operators modified gearing and brakes to suit their perceived needs. The first company I rented bikes from was the biggest, and had them set up with a semi-custom transmission setup that had 2x8 derailleur gears coupled with a 3-speed hub gear. That's 48 distinct drive ratios, though obviously there was some overlap between them. The upshot of this is that with enough of a run up, or a sufficiently long downhill, you could reach about 40mph, or conversely you could spin it up a vertical cliff if you were so inclined.

The low gears came in very handy one night when I was plying my trade in the New Town, as I was sitting around smoking fags and drinking red bull with some other riders a number of Scotland rugby players asked us to take them to the casino. I ended up with two of them who were easily 18st, plus a lady who probably weighed literally nothing compared to them. I worked out the likely total weight of the four of us plus the trike, somewhere around half a ton. It is times like this that you discover that George Street is nowhere near as flat and level as you think it is.

It's one of the highlights of my teenage years, the memory of being one of three rickshaw riders struggling along the road at below walking pace being cheered on by both our passengers and passers-by. We realised halfway there that we'd definitely under-charged for the run, but it didn't matter because each of us got a big enough tip that we could have sacked off working for the rest of the weekend.

[rusty_vw_man]

Had a tired VW bay window camper. Needed blocks and mortar for some DIY so off I went and loaded it up. Roughly within the payload of ~800kg, but that was for a much fresher van, as I found I couldn’t open the passenger door as the whole van had sagged a bit. Unloaded it when I got home and it returned to its original shape and the door opened and closed again. 

Sold it shortly after in the basis that it seemed far less rigid than I’d like in a vehicle! 

[Tomtation]

Fully dressed Volvo B230FT engine in the boot of a classic Saab 900 convertible...

A bit weighty! Good job i'd changed the previously already sagging rear suspension for bilstein B4s etc 🤣🤣

[DavidB]

That’ll never go in th …


Oh

[mat777]

Whilst all of mine have been legal, it hasn't stopped some of them looking patently dodgy!

As an opener: collecting a very cheap FB Marketplace 8x6 shed, which happened to be in Rutland when I was in Liverpool. Who needs to hire a van when you've got a Ranger, some tyres, blankets and straps? Yes, there was quite a lot of wind noise on the way back!

 

 

Then there was the time I moved some helicopter rotor blades as part of a 3-way (ooh-err) parts deal. I had a 6 metre trailer, surely that would be long enough? Not even slightly, as it turns out - these ex-military big boys were nearly 9 metres long!  With a metre of front overhang, I was a measuring-tape confirmed 10mm inside the legal limit of 2m rear overhang...



UNfortunately, this front overhang was to prove my undoing, as having successfully navigated all the way from Hull to Cardiff with said load (including a google-maps diverted section down a single track country road with passing spaces nowhere near big enough for 40ft of combination - a half hour of my life that still causes me nightmare flashbacks to this day), the final tight turn into the destination caused an unfortunate load/bumper interface as seen here:

 

Not oversized at all, but one that got me a lot of odd looks was moving a Phantom external fuel tank. I think most people thought it was some kind of Dr Strangelove-esque bomb...
It was however quite fun* to load, because a) all the weight was in the mounting structure at the top, which was also the only place it could be shackled from to forklift it. Some creative forklift work had to ensure to allow it to roll over on itself until stable - which brings us to b) being a fragile lightweight structure, it couldn't strapped down too tight, but also had to be strapped tight enough to squash into the tyres and not try to escape. Also not helped by the smooth shape meaning there was no corner to wedge a strap into and prevent it walking off, like I usually try to do....

 

Probably the daftest looking load however, was the time I moved my Sea King cockpit on my new car trailer with a high deck. Now, a Sea King is already pretty tall, before its mounted on a frame with casters. When you then decide to stick it on an over-deck trailer than a low height through-deck trailer, you get a 5 metre monument to stupidity that makes other road users give you an extremely wide berth (and stops you getting above 4th gear/50mph)... Luckily there were no crosswinds that weekend! 

[Metal Guru]

Slightly off topic, but if you buy a Tent Box,  are you contractually obliged to leave it on your car permanently?

[comfortablynumb]

6 hours ago, Metal Guru said:

Slightly off topic, but if you buy a Tent Box,  are you contractually obliged to leave it on your car permanently?

MK1 son is currently storing his on the roof bars on my "spare" Range Rover he's supposed to be putting back together!

More to do with the fact that it's a heavy and unwieldy bastard, and he's got nowhere else to put it 🙄

[dieselnutjob]