48' or 53' What is everyone using?

I have a 48' insulated van (old reefer)... I stay loaded with bulk potatoes outbound and misc freight, usually iron castings or scrap paper, on the way home.

I used to pull my own 53' dry van... in the last 5 years I have only pulled one load that actually cubed out before it scaled out.... a 48' works fine for me.

 

Good looking trailer there Roadhound. Miss the spread?

 

I do end up stacking many pallets by the time I get my load all put together. I do LTL reefer and have anywhere between 5-15 stops a week. Some of the products I can stack if there is no breakdown or I know that reciever has a forklift to downstack it. But at others they only have electric pallet jacks or the pallet is a bunch of 5 gal. pails and these can be stacked, but they are very unstable. I will say that there has been 1 time where I was pretty much packed full and had to hand stack boxes on the rear floor just to get the last pallet to fit...that was a great paying week.

 

PT,
I thought my 48 loaded like a railcar was great, but a 53 loaded like a railcar - OH YEAH!!...cha ching....(grin)

 

In about 1980, the length laws changed and my employer lengthened their 45's to 48'. They tried to raise the rates for a 48, and GM told them, "You will provide only 48's, with no rate increase."

I was driving for a beer distributor in the 1990s when Budweiser changed from heavy washable bottles to light throw-a-ways. We had a bottle crushing/recycling business, but found a micro brewery in Dubuque that would buy the used Budweiser bottles. I loaded a 53' to the doors and discovered that the tandems were overweight, primarily because the overhang actually takes weight off the drives.

 

also on 53ft its easyer for the dock plate to lay flat in the trailer so the fork lift can enter the trailer to get the first pallet off,on those 48's with the load to the doors and the trailer floor just below the dock floor makes it very difficult to get that first pallet off, only lite loads go past that red line, all 40,000 lb loads and up must stay behind that line, i think its 40,000

 

This is a decent rule of thumb, but not a hard rule. Many loads will be past that "red line" which many company trailers have and be just fine...the issue comes from the weight of the pallets and how its distributed through out the trailer. I've had many lheavy oads that were to the back door and have had no problem scaling them. But a couple of those loads were also 50,000+ so weights weren't a issue there.

 

Thanks Gears, I like it pretty well myself, lol. And I do kinda miss my spread, but not as much as I thought I would. I have had several 44,000 lb loads on it already and have yet to have to slide the tandems. Plus, it gets around pretty easy too. But the biggest plus is this thing is 1500 lb lighter than the spread.

 

1500 lbs lighter...that's terrific. I've not pulled a tandem for years, but I imagine they back a bit easier with a more defined pivot point. Sounds like you got the tandems dialed in...."set it and forget it"