Starting a dump truck business !!

Whatever you get make sure its got a walking beam and that the beam pivots arent ripping out of the towers and bushings not puking out of their bores. The tandems should be parallel and even side to side, not sticking out 3" after a turn. Hendrickson, chalmers and neway ARD are probably the top offroad suspensions.. Kenworth 8 bag seems to be love and hate. In general air ride isnt really for dumps.

Look for a double frame and look it over awful close for busted frame from front to back inside and out. This is a lot of filthy crawling but its critical. Ive done a lot of hot gluing on dump trucks. An 8LL or 15spd are good offroad trannies. A locker is real handy. Ford L9000, mack and international all made good vocational trucks. Engine id your choice. Twin steering boxes would be a big benefit.

 

Mack made some tough old trucks, but would not be my first choice by far. Just too many high priced mack only parts, especially the older models.
Walking beams are tough, but again, personally I would go air ride given a choice.
International made some very good vocational trucks, speced with heavy rears, mostly L10 cummins and a lot of them had the 8ll trans, these made some very good dump trucks,
Just about any brand of truck will make a good truck if speced right for a dump, and that even depends on what kind of work you will mainly be doing, and where.

 

Yeah, I did lots of dump work and that's true, you'll need a night shift mechanic to repair what broke during the day. Reason is, with dump work, it's load the box and go, and many times it's max or over max weight. When you are "burning circles", you get paid by the load, so no time to get personal getting legal, you won't make any money that way. Then if you get busted, all that overloading is for nothing. It's why dump trucks are fair game for DOT, and you'll never see a dump truck going over a state scale. Sometimes you can load right on a scale, for gross, but dump trucks are always overweight on a certain axle. You can't win.

 

I wish it was only blown airbags. I have a friend who is running 5-7 dump trucks daily. Whenever I want to visit him I don't even call. I just go to the yard. He's always there- weekends included.