Load Restraint Guide

Load Restraint Guide 2025 (PDF, 45MB)

This guide provides best practice load restraint systems to meet loading requirements and loading performance standards. It includes technical information, detailed diagrams and worked examples to help you determine the restraint required for your heavy vehicle load.

You can Purchase a hard copy of the Load Restraint Guide 2025 through Canprint Information Services in either an A4 or a convenient glovebox A5 size.

This Load Restraint Guide provides helpful insights into:

• the process to follow when loading a vehicle and designing load restraint systems for common loading scenarios
• appropriate load restraint methods for different load types
• the engineering principles found in load restraint systems written using plain language.

The Load Restraint Guide is an information guide only. It reflects best practice load restraint systems to meet loading requirements and loading performance standards and is not a legal document.

2025 update

The Load Restraint Guide has recently gone through a re-brand where images have been refreshed, including reformatting the guide to make it more user friendly.

The Load Restraint Guide 2025 FAQs (PDF, 388KB) and Load Restraint Guide – Edition 4 amendment summary (PDF, 178KB) are available to help industry understand the changes that have been made.

Please note: the changes made are relatively minor, the 2018 version of the guide still remains current and valid for use.

Load restraint for light vehicles

The National Transport Commission manages the Load Restraint Guide for Light Vehicles.

A light vehicle is any car, ute, van, truck or trailer (including a combination, e.g. a ute and trailer) that has a gross vehicle mass up to 4.5 tonnes.