Looking for advice for end dump purchase steel or aluminum

Steel. Aluminum is fine for refined products but it won't hold up to a steady diet of stumps and other demo related loads.

 

Sounds to me like the empty weight is not really that critical to what you’re doing and aluminum will not last long with demo debris even if it is just stumps

 

Pretty sure you actually need 38’ to get the 100k now

I would probably find a used MA spec steel trailer with a high lift or barn door and live with the 80k for stumps and demo, and an aluminum Tri axle for everything else

Other option is go with the aluminum trailer and get a Tri axle dump with a steel body for the hard stuff

either that or you need to figure out which is more important to you, because you aren’t going to make much subbing out a steel trailer if you can’t get the tonnage on

 

Not legally anyway.

Out here our 28' end dumps are limited to 73,280 but since they usually work hourly...and everyone else is limited to the same... we usually just load and go. We don't have a lot of scales to cross an d we've never had a problem. As a matter of fact when the state turned a local small scale into a super-coop we hauled all the export dig-out and pre paving import, kept the weight down to 80 grand, and everyone made some money.
Most of our work is for public agencies and the 28 footers are just the right size on job sites.

 

A lot of places aren’t letting trucks out overweight now, MA is 99k for 5, NH and VT are also 99k but you need 6, (think you need 6 in Maine as well)

Tri axle dump trucks (tandem with a lift) are 77k all over New England, he would be better off going with a hard ox body and a high lift for the rough stuff and an aluminum trailer

 

Not sure what your insurance and licensing situation looks like but generally speaking trailers are cheap to keep around…. So get one of each. My thoughts would be buy a cheap beat up steel trailer for your excavation projects and if you think you need another one to move in clean material go get a nicer aluminum one and then try to do some custom work with it. Maybe there’s some smaller dump trucking operations around there that would fill in when you need extra capacity and just skip buying the trailer all together. Sometimes it’s cheaper to hire a truck with a driver than hire a driver and figure out how to keep them busy the rest of the time