Axle Placement on a Van Trailer

I have a question about the spread of the axles I saw on a van trailer today.

Down the street from where I live is a big farm that grows everything from pumpkins and squash to corn, potatoes and radishes. At their shop were two van trailers today with an axle in the center and two axles in the rear with a 10' spread. I've seen a lot of flatbeds with that 10' spread in the back, but why would this van have that 3rd axle in the middle of the trailer? Wouldn't having an axle at that placement make it a real bear to turn? It seems to me in a tight radius, you'd be dragging those tires across the pavement.

Any ideas?

 

I didn't see any type of hydraulics going into the one in the lot...the other one was backed into a loading dock and I couldn't get a very good look at it. That's their machine/repair shop so I'm assuming they were both empty...and if they were hydraulic and empty wouldn't they raise them?

In the fall they take a lot of their trailers right out into the fields when they harvest potatoes and load them directly from the harvester into huge bins and those are picked up using front end loaders and pushed into the vans. I was thinking maybe that third axle was to take some of the weight off the drives and rear trailer axles so they don't sink into the soft ground?

 

That make sense too. When they harvest potatoes they use those trailers and haul them about three miles away to a warehouse. Then when they ship them out they do it using commercial reefer carriers. I got a load of pumpkins out of there last year (the field they were using to grow pumpkins is only a quarter mile from my house) on my road. Easy load for me, when they found out I lived right down the street, they told me to walk home and take a nap and they sent a picker down to my house in a golf cart to get me when they were done loading me. Then the foreman introduced me to one of the sons of the guy that founded the farm a hundred years ago and it turns out that guy lives about a half mile away from my house.

Now they call my company in the fall and request me for longer hauls like hard squash and pumpkins to Florida. I've even taken a few runs of potatoes to Ft. Wayne, IN to the potato chip factory for them. Those are short runs with a dead head back so I don't really like to run them, but I figure they swing me some good runs and actually call my company and insist on me driving for them if I'm available. They're nice people...good neighbors. I live on a small private dead-end drive in the woods about 2500 feet off the county road and it's a real pain backing my rig down my driveway. Now, whenever I get home for a few days and they know who I am, they let me keep my truck on their property about 5 miles away. Heck, often times if there's someone in the shop they'll even give me a ride home after I secure the rig.

 

Yes on Michigan so I'm thinking they use those trailers just in short distance from field to warehouses. And I know what you mean about some of those tanks and gravel haulers. I saw one a couple of weeks ago that had like 38 tires on it. 28 on the trailer and 10 on the tractor. It was hauling gravel for road construction.