A wheel bearing costs a few dollars and appears on no specification sheet, yet it is the part most likely to produce your first field failure — and the one most warranty documents exclude. Importers who settle bearing and hub details while the order is open, and carry the kits, spend their first service season selling maintenance instead of arguing about it.

Why bearings fail earlier on imported units

A caravan axle does an odd kind of work. It sits fully loaded and motionless through a sea freight cycle and months on a dealer yard, then tows a thousand kilometres in a week on corrugations, gravel and creek crossings. While the unit stands, grease can dry out and moisture can condense inside the hub; the first water crossing a customer makes can push water past a seal that was sound at the factory. Bearings are a cheap part doing a hard job, and they usually give warning only as heat, a scored race and a wheel with play. Sizes are not interchangeable between axle families either, so the kit for one model in your range often will not fit the next.

What to settle while the order is open

Ask for identification, not a description: the bearing and seal numbers per model, so a parts supplier in your own market can cross-reference them.

• Serviceable or sealed hubs. Strip-and-repack hubs and sealed assemblies lubricated through the spindle need different greases, different skills — a top-up is not a service — and different spares.
• The grease standard in writing. A high-temperature lithium-complex grease with extreme-pressure additives is the common baseline; salt water or regular water crossings justify a marine-grade grease.
• Consumables listed as spares. Seals, dust caps, split pins and castle nuts belong beside the bearings on the spare parts list, because a seal should be replaced at every repack.
• Capacity follows axle rating. A range spanning two axle ratings needs two bearing sets, and the hub family should be one your local market can actually supply.
• Service data included. Torque settings and the first-service check after the first 1,000 km, written in the language your customers read.

The service obligation you inherit with every unit

Wheel bearings sit with tyres and brake linings on the wear-item exclusions that Australian caravan warranties commonly publish. A rejected bearing claim is normal trade practice rather than a factory slight, but the complaint still arrives at your counter, and a bearing that seizes at highway speed is a safety event, not a parts order. That makes the service interval a product decision: a 12-month or 10,000 km baseline for touring, halved for regular off-road work, heavy loads or salt water, printed in the owner's manual and repeated at handover. Running gear is documented per model — the 21ft off-road caravan with electronic stability control lists its suspension, coupling and brake specification model by model — and bearing sizes and intervals should be recorded the same way.

Stock the first container for servicing, not only for sales

Importers who treat bearings as a factory detail buy them one at a time, at air-freight speed, with a customer stranded. A working stock list is shorter than most expect: a bearing and seal kit per axle rating in the range, one tub of the specified grease, dust caps and split pins, and a hub temperature check written into the pre-delivery inspection. LZM is a China-based off-road caravan manufacturer and exporter supplying Australia, New Zealand and the United States, and the published range sets out running gear, brakes and equipment per model — the detail a spare-parts list should be built around.

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