Chalmers rubber block vs Hendrickson walking beam

Had a ten wheeler with Hendrickson(iirc) 65K rubber block suspension. It was a heavy truck, but i never had any complaint with suspension. Did ride alittle hard.
Cant have everything( if only i could convince wifey of that).

 

If you are buying used, you should really examine the walking beam bushings.

 

i have the hendricks rubber block in my dump ride is a little tough some times but i need to replace the rear shocks(4) and i think it will ride better....my truck is a tri and i cant gross that much here in nc, but truck came from florida and according to some of the papers and stuff they gross 78000 down there with tri so i think the rubber block is fine....

 

Both would make my kidneys hurt!

Hendrickson has a fix for they're walking beam.

 

Problem is, if he's grossing 85K, he's going to need more than a 52K tandem suspension...and that's all the AR2 is good for. Raydan Manufacturing has a similar air-ride walking beam setup, but they can be set up much heavier....+75K!

Personally, I'd either go with the Raydan Air Link if I needed to use air pressure to gauge my load or a Mack Camelback if I didn't...

 

the air ride stuff is not all that great from what im told by buddies that have air ride ...they work great on the ride but once off the road its a bad ride...i have even seen for my self a dump truck turn over after bacing up a hill and trying to dump..ask the guy what happen he forgot to dump the bags.......but that could have been just what he said but most say off road is not that great....i myself am off road most of the time....

 

Yeah, a typical air ride setup SUCKS off road...but Raydan's Airlink and Hendrickson's AR2 is just a walking beam that has air bags instead of a steel spring, so I doubt it would be near as bad as you are thinking. Raydan's bags even have rubber blocks in 'em so that you can ride around with the air dumped if you need to without damaging anything (not sure if Hendrickson has a similar feature on theirs or not), but you're right...any time you've got air bags, you want to dump them so the load is sitting on something solid before you start putting that bed up in the air.

 

I have been in the dump truck industry in Florida for more than 25 years, I currently own two of them, total gross for a tri or any straight truck here is 70,000 lbs, if you want you could add more axles but still not allowed to go over 70k.

 

Having owned several Hendrickson suspensions, I will say they are tough, rough riding when empty or loaded light, and ride decent when fully loaded. And they will also lean a lot on a dump truck. The springs are mounted directly under the frame, the same for Chalmers. The truck that used to bust my butt on twisty roads had a Reyco four leaf suspension. The springs are mounted outside the frame rails, and offer better stability, but you loose articulation with the Reyco.

If the only choice is Hendrickson and Chalmers, and empty ride is not a consideration, I would choose Chalmers. Otherwise I would choose a RTE Hendrickson, as the RT Hendrickson rides like a dog when empty or loaded light, but the RT may be more stable when dumping on an off level surface.