Needing advice on Hopper Bottom's

What kind of info are you looking for?

 

you'll run heavily laden,you'll run a lot,you'll learn to load your own at the silos using chains to open and close the chute to load then pull up and load the rest,you'll hurry up to sit and wait to unload,you'll turn cranks and handles to unload,pull up and unload the remaining, and finally you'll learn to roll the tarp over the load in all kinds of weather and unroll the same tarp while using a long folding handle.not bad running actually if you like the backroads and going to farms and milling companies.lots of dust from dirt roads and the loads too.

 

I pull a hopper about half the time and like it. We load at farms and mainly haul to river terminals and we sometimes haul fertilizer to coops.

We have air guages on the truck and trailers. I start loading the front hopper and stop when my guage in the truck reads 61 pounds. Pull up to load the rear hopper until the trailer guage reads 64 pounds. When i'm done the truck guage should read 71 pounds. It gets tricky getting your weights right if you're loading on a hill or your wheels are sitting in a hole.

 

Worst part for us is waiting in line in the spring after ice out and during the fall harvest.

 

what company are u going to work for, if u don't mind me asking?

 

We used to do some otr hopper work. (I never did any) The broker we used calls every so often to see if were available. He said the rates have really been down lately.

One thing to remember with hopper work is you are almost always time stamped. You run across scales at most facilities and they almost always have times on the tickets.