An off-road caravan is cargo, but what sits inside it is not always ordinary cargo. The house battery is a regulated item and a gas installation adds a second — classified by chemistry and condition on the day of shipment, not by the caravan's size or berth count.

Two battery chemistries, two different routes

A sealed, non-spillable AGM or VRLA battery is UN2800, a Class 8 corrosive. It can move as general cargo only on evidence: it must have passed the vibration and pressure differential tests, must not release electrolyte from a cracked case at 55 °C, and its terminals must be protected against short circuit. Ask for the test report, not an assurance that the battery is sealed; the declaration still names UN2800 even when the shipment is treated as non-restricted. An open-vented wet battery has no exemption route at all.

Lithium is Class 9 under the IMDG Code, and a caravan house bank is far too large for the small-battery exemption, which stops at 20 Wh per cell and 100 Wh per battery. Which entry applies depends on how the bank travels: installed in equipment and shipped in its own crate are separate entries with separate requirements. The published configurations on the off-road caravans from China range run from 2 × 100Ah AGM with 300W of solar on the 16ft hard-top island-bed models to a 2 × 200Ah lithium bank on the 21ft model. That single line on the build sheet is what your forwarder asks about first.

What lithium changes in the booking

The documentation for a fully regulated shipment is fixed: the UN38.3 test summary, a safety data sheet, and a dangerous goods declaration completed by a trained person. Carriers want the request with the booking and their DG desks take days, so the slot must be approved before the build finishes. Some carriers decline the commodity outright, which is worth testing early rather than at the gate. And the letter of indemnity route engine-powered vehicles use to travel as not dangerous is closed once lithium-ion batteries are on board, so the same model in AGM and in lithium can land in different freight brackets.

An empty gas cylinder is still regulated

LPG is a flammable gas, so a cylinder containing any of it cannot sail — and an emptied cylinder is not automatically exempt. It stays regulated until cleaned, purged and certified gas-free by a competent person, with the valve shut and the outlet capped. In practice that means cylinders removed or left empty and disconnected, with the installation purged by running each appliance until it dies out. Photograph the cylinders and the purged system before the container is closed — the cheapest evidence you will hold.

What to write into the order

Five items settle this before production ends:

• The battery entry — chemistry, make, model and rated capacity in Ah and Wh, per unit.
• Who prepares the declaration — the shipper offers the cargo for carriage, so agree who files it and who pays.
• Documents with the shipment — UN38.3 test summary, safety data sheet, and the non-spillable test report for an AGM build.
• Cylinders and purge, recorded — whether cylinders ship, and the purge evidence that travels with the unit.
• The cost of a held container — demurrage, storage and re-export charges sit with whoever misdeclared.

The 16ft hard-top models carry a 3,000 kg ATM, and mid-size units ship one per 40 ft flat rack. Before the container is booked, send the battery chemistry, its rated capacity and the market the unit is going to — those three settle what has to be declared. Battery test summaries and shipment paperwork go to [email protected]; quick questions are faster on WhatsApp: +86 186 6381 3961, and the published range is at www.lgloader.com.

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