Ramps for Flatbedding Applications

Looking at the picture, I think I understand now why you would ask that. The bus has air ride on the rear. I dumped the air out of the rear. Thats why it looks so low. The bus is 11' tall. I had to dump the rear and drop air pressure out of the front tires and crunch the front suspension down to get it under 14' on my deck. I'm rolling with it now at 13'7. My lower deck is 3'2.

Hope that clears it up.for you.

Hurst

 

Remember that ramps also hold resale value, money out of your own pocket for a rollback is money you will never recoup. Just something to bear in mind.

 

I hauled a wrecked Ledwell Hydra Tail the other week. The whole deck is a ramp!

 

Thats pretty cool. My issue is I do mainly legal loads. That trailer looks heavier then the step I have now. I have no interest in hauling heavy... 50k+ loads. OD is fine with me. I just dont want to tear my truck up hauling heavy and only getting $3mi when I can haul a light OD and get paid the same.

I was looking at a 48' Doonan that had a 5' dove tale attached on the rear. Had 4 ramps across the back so you still have 53' of deck for pallet load etc. I need to find out how much it weighs to see if it would work for me.

My next set up, I want to try to be around 31 - 32k empty, full of fuel and all my gear.

Hurst

 

And what about the fuel to drag those ramps around for a million miles? They're only a couple hundred pounds, and don't add a ton of drag. You can't measure it tank to tank, but it does have a cost. Even if it only costs you 0.01mpg, that's 320 gallons of fuel burnt up lugging them around. You could pay for a rollback out of pocket 10 times and still come out ahead. Or, you could tell the broker you need another $200 for rollbacks, pay them their $75 on each end, and throw that extra $50 on top of the thousands you saved by not getting them in the first place.

 

I was looking at landoll traveling axles today. After seeing how nice they are, it hurt reading that they're 14,000-19,000lbs tare for 25T+ GVWR. Mac has a new aluminum stretch trailer out that tares about 12,200 for a 48'/80'. I'm going to start digging around in that niche to see how it's doing. Even if it isn't great, I can keep doing what I'm doing with that new Mac since my '00 Transcraft is pushing 13,500 with all its reinforcements.

 

You can use the ramps way more often then once a year.

Dont forget time wasted waiting for a rollback to show up either.

If the broker is gonna toss in $200 more then thats $200 more in the pocket of the guy with the ramps.

Being versatile in this business is nothing but good.