Motor mover. Necessity or nice to have?
Simple answer:- is they are not a necessity, as before 1990 they did not even exist, yet they still sold 30,000 new touring caravans!
I had the honour to know the inventor of the caravan mover, and I met him on several occasions whilst he was developing the first road wheel driven prototype at his home in Gloucestershire. He always stated there were reasons why he thought it was worth while:-
His primary reason was he wanted to produce a system that would enable almost anyone with any sort of mobility difficulties to be able to hitch or position a caravan. It would use a wired remote so the user could walk round the caravan to check its positioning.
The device had to be able to be installed without invalidating any caravan chassis warranties.
It had to be able to climb, stop and hold on a 1:4 incline (the equivalent of driving up a kerb). There had been jockey wheel movers, but they worked fine on a horizontal, hard standing, but they struggled when the surface was soft or slippery, and they were downright dangerous on slopes because the maximum grip was only proportional to the down force on the jockey wheel.
By using the road wheels it employed most of the weight of the caravan which could be utilised to improve the grip/control of the mover.
He also wanted it to be easy to manufacture and not rely on high precision engineering components, as he said he wanted the village blacksmith to be able to install or repair it" but that has not been a feature that carried through by the copycats who have gone for more exotic materials and close tolerances, and of course there are now the ubiquitous digital remote controls.
Still a great idea, and how many back injuries has it prevented?
There are some down sides, first is the cost, and of course the weight of the unit does reduce the available weight capacity for personal items etc.