Dry van & refer design question?

Yes.

The rivets are a give away.

The horizontal ribs in a reefer actually serve a purpose of cooling the skin.

For dry vans, they are as I am told to reinforce the sidewall a bit more because of the internal e-track.

 

If you built a post trailer without the ribs it would look as wavy as hell with each post accentuated by the stress it is transferring to outside sheeting.

Their is no rigidity in the thin flat sheeting, be it aluminum or steel.

Composite sandwich sheeting has considerable rigidity without the ribbing or corrugating.

I never hear of cooling the skin. I don't know what that is about. Someone want to point me to any documentation on that.

And you know I better read Mike's post, sounds good.

 

Yea @Mike2633 has some good reading material. Days of it actually

 

You aren't missing anything that is a sheet and post trailer you are pulling. The other poster is typing out of his butt.

 

I should have phrased my reply better.

Uncorrigated post and beam trailers do exist. When they are heavily loaded the do wrinkle and look stressed when loaded heavy. The top edge of the side panels will wrinkle and gather as all the stress is pulling at the lower half of the panels and the lower rail that is in tension.

The corrugation of the sheet metal adds rigidity to the trailer. Corrugated galvanised iron - Wikipedia

However, the corrugation is unsightly for some buyers and adds thickness to the walls. Thicker walls take away from the volume inside the trailer since the width of trailer is limited by the DOT. While this is not a limiting factor for almost all loads, most companies would not like to limit themselves in any way in the purchase of their equipment.

For these reasons, composite sidewalls in dry vans have taken over. They allow high strength with little loaded distortion while having smooth sides and ultra thin walls for most interior volume.

Corrugation can still be seen in some reefers bought today, where walls are formed post method. It is a given that the walls of a reefer have to be thicker anyway so it is less of a concern.

Also, stainless walled trailers continue with the corrugation. For one the corrugation reduces the hazard of having a highly reflective surface out in traffic. For another reason, stainless is considerably more expensive then aluminum or painted steel. It is often bought in thiner qualities to reduce costs. The corrugation makes up for the lack of thickness.

 

This thread intrigued me so I thought I’d add to it and see if anyone has an explanation for me with mine. I noticed the cost to buy a used reefer lately has been a lot cheaper than a dry van. I was looking for a van to haul seed corn with. I purchased a 2013 utility reefer for a decent price and converted it to a dry van by removing the front unit. I like the appearance of a ribbed side better so that was a benefit for me. This trailer has an aluminum corrugated floor and an aluminum roof as well as a mixture of aluminum and steel floor crossmembers. This trailer also has a liner on the inside walls I’m assuming for insulation and I believe it has insulation in the walls as well? I used to pull a utility standard van trailer with smooth sides and steel wheels. Basic trailer. This utility reefer with the unit removed somehow came in lighter than the basic utility van trailer I pulled before did. By almost 1k lbs. of course this I chock up to the amount of aluminum the trailer has. I am however curious if these side panels are also aluminum? I figured steel. The real big kicker I want to address is with this trailer I get better fuel economy average than I ever did with the basic trailer. Do the ribbed sides make a difference for aerodynamics? Any cool information about this trailers design is welcomed.

 

I would go with tires more than likely or one has worse bearing adjustment than the other. It will not hurt on aero but not gonna make any difference the you can measure.