Straight Truck Axle Placement?

I don’t think its against reg. It is no different then the guys who put a dump body on a second hand sleeper cab fleet truck and go to work. The dump bucket overhanging the rear by 6 ft looks stupid but isn’t illegal. Lol

 

Found in the BC regs that maximum effective overhang on a straight truck is 4.0m. Effective overhang looks to be measured from center of the drive axles to the rear of the vehicle.

OP will have to lookup the effective rear overhang for their jurisdiction as the regs in BC are probably not the same.

 

This is what I pulled up. Like I said its for a completely different jurisdiction so it means nothing but it might help you in knowing what terms to search for.

 

From what I see, they spec'd a box that was too long for what they are hauling. I'm assuming that it's full-sized pallets of Tequila. I guess they can't ship shorter pallets, so this was the solution? Seems rather expensive, and requiring a lot of welding. What I'd think would make more sense would be to upgrade the front axle, and run super-singles, then get it rated for 10T on the front axle. I believe this would be legal just about anywhere, plus it would leave the wheelbase as it should be. And, I'd think it would cost a lot less, and even allow them to carry just a bit more freight (27T vs. 23T).

I've seen a lot of stupidity with box trucks. I spent a summer driving full TT loads of ice from the main ice plant to distribution centers in nearby cities. I was at our Buffalo center, and there they had rented a bunch of class 5 6-wheel reefer boxes, each rated for 17T. The boxes could hold 8 pallets, at 2T each pallet. You should've seen those little 16.5" dual tires screaming for mercy each time they left the lot. DOT finally caught up with them one day, just at the intersection by Transit Rd., and weighed 4 of them. Turns out, we could only legally carry 5 pallets at a time. We had to send in 3 more trucks, making 7 trucks to carry out what 4 carried in.... I'll leave to your imagination how much the fines were for 4 trucks each being over 10,000lbs overweight.....

BTW, after that fiasco, the DOT sat right outside the property at least once a week. I always made sure my log book was up-to-date every time I delivered a trailer load there....

 

The expense of moving an entire fleet of tandems is a lot more than upgrading the steering axle and having their vehicle supplier help spec the next units to meet payload demands.

The LTL that I retired from had their Penske supplied tandem box trucks built with 102" wide bodies to allow pinwheeling pallets to get more in the box.

There are ways to fix this but no legal foul to greive.

The manufacturer will supply any chassis length you desire and wheelbase to match though such a dense product may affect the structure in the overhung area so the box mounting fasteners, etc could become problematic

AND

I don't understand why any one, including deskbound bean counters, would risk an potential under-ride accident striking such a dense load; looks like one could fit almost an entire surburban underneath that floor before it would strike the suspension.

What a headline "Soccor Mom and 5 kids killed underneath loaded Tequilla truck; pictures at eleven".