Anyone use live bottom trailers? for Gravel or Asphalt?

Hi White Dog, I've seen county trucks up north use them when redoing a road with asphalt, as sometimes, the location is a long distance from the asphalt plant, and rather than dumping into a paver, which can sometimes take a while, they dump it in a pile, like you say, and take off to get another load, and a grader spreads it out, and the paver follows the grader.

 

they use belly dumps quite a bit around here for hot mix there is a couple paving crews using the belt trailers. then the smaller jobs are done with straight dump trucks.

 

Back in the 70s' use to see them around here hauling asphalt constantly, yet the only thing we see now is 10 yard dump trucks.


In the 80's worked for a company that had several live bottom trailers, They hauled the peeled bark from saw mills to places that made compost out of it.


All thru the years trucks that clean out chicken houses use a live bottom.


They do their job very well.

 

Sorry about that semi retired. I kind of misspoke there. They do use belt trailers for both products but not usually back and forth as you said. That being said I went to an auction sale last spring to bid on one and you could see where he had hauled agricultural lime and asphalt in it in the recent past. Didn't stop all the poor farmers from bidding it up out of our range lol.

 

One of our competitors tried hauling sand and gravel in a walking floor. The abrasiveness of the product caused a lot of wear to the moving pieces. The sand sifted into every nook and cranny and it took forever to wash it out. A belt trailer might work but a regular walking floor isn't good at all.
We tried hauling sugar beet pulp in ours and the clean-out time...sweeping...made it too time consuming.
We also tried hay pellets and firewood pellets in the walking floor and the smaller broken pieces would stay n the grooves in the floor.
I imagine gravel, especially the smaller stuff, would ruin a regular walking floor.
We have two belt trailers that we haul bulk in and they work well. No gravel or asphalt, though.
Once that asphalt cooled and dried you'd have a major cleanout problem.