Wheeled equipment on aluminum decks..

Cat is shipping large graders with no tires at all on aluminum step decks, just wood banded to the rims. I highly doubt they are destroying trailers.

 

Not defend anyone - but machines with hard rubber tires and small wheels are deck killers. If you want to find the weak boards on your lowboy load up and airport pushback tractor or a wheeled material handler or a sizable forklift.

And if really want to screw up your deck haul a compactor......

 

A railroad car mover comes to mind. 10" wide retractable tires with prolly a couple thousand pounds of air pressure in them to carry the thing...

 

The solid wheel argument makes perfect sense since the contact patch is way less therefore more psi.

Hauled a big vibratory compactor on a Wilson Roadbrute combo step. No damage to the aluminum/apitong decking or top flange of the main beams but man it was a gut wrenching thing to watch

 

I think he is talking about his favorite ....
trash / landfill compactors .
There is landfill or soil compactors . Ex . 825 or 826
There is a massive difference between the two .
One is designed to shred and destroy, the other is designed to actually knead the material tight.

 

I can testify the front wheels on this pig are a board splitting son of a *****.
All the weight is carried on that little center rib. Bout an inch wide and a 3" contact radius.

 

love that 4020!!!!!

 

We hauled a large forklift on the deck of a heavy built 5 axle that was built to handle large coils.

Steel cross members every 6-8” if I remember right.

The solid wheels found some weak wood and we were replacing them after the delivery.

 

A lot depends on how far apart your angle braces are to the outer rail, and where the tires sit in relation to them when loaded, but you should be fine. If in doubt I have used some short 3 foot or so oak 2 X's under the wheels before.