Tilt trailers?

Hello all,

I know that this doesn't involve moving machines, but trailers are a neccisity(spelling?). Any way I have been looking at tilt trailers. Figuring it would be nice to tilt the trailer and then winch whatever the load is on to the bed.

But I do have a question on the designs of them. The bulk of them that I have seen, when the trailer tilts, it lifts the front axle up. And relies on the back axle and the back of the trailer to hold the weight. Which in my feeling could cause the axle to snap or some of the brackets to break as well.

Is there any manufactures out there that just make the bed tilt? Or should I even be concerned? I have also seen a roll back trailer, which I would also like to think about.

Thanks,
Chris

P.S. I'm thinking of a 16 foot trailer here. Not the 6x10 or so sized.

Do a Google search for hydraulic trailers - a friend of mine used one to move his solid tired forklift. It lowers to within a few inches of the ground, he unloads, reloads, and uses the hand pump to raise it back up again.

Hello Welder691
Lots of tilt deck or recovery trailers out there.
Load Trail & Load Max Tilt Deck Trailers

I have owned a Sloan's Kwik Load rollback trailer for the last several years, and really like the low loading angle. Mine is a 10k gvw that includes stake pockets with rub rails and a steel deck. If I'm moving machinery, I make sure to have wood between the machine and deck. A lot more places with the stake pockets to tie off to vs the standard car trailer that only has 4 tie down d-rings. Texas Rollback builds a similar trailer. One downside to a rollback, is when sliding back the deck, the tow vehicle needs to be inline with the trailer, so not to derail the deck rollers from the track. When the deck is all the way back up, there are tabs and pins to hold the deck and lower subframe together.

Hudson Bros. Trailers in Mint Hill, NC builds single and double axle tilt trailers. Check out their web site to find the nearest dealer.

Many of the haulers' group hauls have been on trailers . . .

Chris,

I have rebuilt two trailers so that they could tilt, and built one tilt trailer from scratch. I have also used non-tilting trailers as well. You do not give up much with a well-designed tilt trailer, because when it is not tilted, it acts like a rigid trailer. I have loaded & un-loaded a number of seriously heavy loads by myself using tilt trailers -- as long as you have patience, it can be a safe experience because you minimize the height the load needs to be lifted.

I always mounted a 2" receiver near the tongue of the trailers I built that tilted so as to use a Ramsey receiver-mount winch to load and unload. It turns out that I usually did not bother with the winch and used one or two come-alongs to do the loading/unloading. (The unloading is only a matter of controlling the descent of the load down the inclined plane of the trailer, so not much muscle is needed.) Do not misunderstand -- a winch is a nice luxury, but it is a luxury that can be added later if you are short of funds.

Many tandem-axle trailers have an equalizing toggle that compensates for the plane of the trailer bed being non-horizontal. The one trailer I built from scratch used rubber torsion axles so that the front tire was well off the ground when the trailer was tilted for loading. This felt a bit strange at first, but it causes no problems. All of the components are load-rated for full-speed road conditions, including hitting a chuck-hole at full load & speed. When you are loading, the components are in static conditions and have plenty of safety margin as you slowly ease the load on. (Now, if you are going to drop the load on, that is a different story . . .)

In addition to tilt and roll-back, there are "kneeling" trailers that drop their deck clear to the ground. They tend to be pretty expensive, but make loading even safer and easier.

One nice thing about tilting trailers is that the tow vehicle continues to control the trailer when it is tilted so that things are stable. I am comparing this situation to that of using a non-tilting trailer, which will, of course, tilt when it is not hitched to anything -- I strongly recommend avoiding doing this when dealing with anything heavy.

Archie
Antique Machinery Haulers' Group Member

P.S.: The 8'x10' flatbed trailer I just built for moving firewood around my property is the opposite of tilting. It has a single axle (dual wheels) and is well-balanced (axle near the center of the bed). It has a jack on the front as usual and a second jack on the rear to stabilize it when it is not hitched up to my tractor. There is a lesson here for haulers: use bottle jacks or blocking to stabilize the rear of a trailer when placing a heavy load on the rear of the trailer. This includes the case where the trailer is hitched to a vehicle -- ask me how I know at your own peril.

Chris

Check out this trailer.

Trailer Features, Specifications and Options: Bri-Mar


I rented one last month to move a Detroit Diesel 6-71 with 10" cast iron pump that weighed a tad more than 10K, OK a tad plus another tad or two. Pulled 400 miles loaded, no problems.
To unload we just tipped the bed, put a 2" schedule 80 pipe under the skids and used the rollback trucks winch to pull her off.

It worked perfect, if I owned one I would get 8K axles instead of the 7K they offer, that way you can get higher rated tires.


Marshall