Packing Light

A few weeks ago we published an article about the GVWR (Gross Vehicle Weight Registered) of a vehicle, and how important it is to stay at or below that federally posted weight limit. Today we will revisit this topic and the importance of packing only the essentials.

Storage is an overlander’s wet dream. Whether it’s a week’s worth of food stuffed into your ARB fridge, or the greatest first-aid kit that has ever been devised—the genre gets off on kitting out the vehicles that are used. It is so often the point of the inexperienced, and sometimes even the seasoned, of bringing too much. It is extra weight you have to haul around and consume fuel for; it is extra junk floating around the vehicle that does not need to be there, and consumes valuable storage space that could be reserved for other critical gear.

Tools are the leading examples of excess. It is often that you will see someone slipping their whole Craftsman tool kit with every socket from 5mm to 23mm into their kit, without realizing that they only need a few sockets. To illustrate this, we will look at the 80 Series Toyota Land Cruiser. All critical components of the truck can be disassembled with these metric sockets: 6,7,8,10,12,14,17, and 19.

So unless you equipped your metric vehicle with standard (read: inch) hardware, there should be no need for you to carry standard sized tools with you on the trail.

By taking the time to sit down and hash out multiple different scenarios that you might likely encounter, and what very specific tools you may need to accomplish the task, you can cut the amount of things you need to drag around with you significantly and create a lighter, simpler load that is easier accessed.

That being said, you should probably bring multiple 10mm sockets. You know the drill.