putting a winch on the back of an otr truck

I run over the road power only delivering trailers and have been seeing the occasional frac tank that needs to be delivered but it requires a winch. my question is can I mount a winch behind my headache rack to hook up the frac tanks or will I need other specialized equipment that I am not aware of?

 

Probably would need rollers or ramps on the rear of the tractor to help it get up & over the rear of the frame without damaging anything and then up onto the 5th wheel without getting hung up.

 

Need a PTO setup to power the winch and ramps or rollers as mentioned above. Winching adds a lot of stress on a small area of frame so you may want to consider reinforcing the frame with some inserts to help handle the additional stress.

 

Yes I agree, he needs a wet line. You will never find an electric winch willing to put up that kind of power consistently. I don't know how sturdy your headrack is, I prefer building a good cross member boltable to the frame. That will pull down anything as long as the got the right winch.

 

Headache racks like the one I had over the years are essentially two pairs of U bolts a foot long around the frame and maybe half a inch. They will NEVER be able to hold a winch big enough to dead lift a 14500 pound trailer or even a fully loaded one.

Ive been examining the possibility to install a winch on my personal vehicle and accept the fact that I will likely need a second battery to support it when it's working and that I will never find that mythical winch able to pick up the truck and put it anywhere. It simply does not have that kind of beef.

There is going to be some weight penalty to this thing and engineering considerations as well. You want to have it part of the frame where there is no rust etc. It's not that common in OTR work and would have been happy to have a winch on hand. (Those are known as tow trucks. Very big winches on many wheels and axles that cost alot of money in a short time)

 

Been there, done that. It's hard to see, but there's a Braden 20 (or 25, I forget) ton winch there.

 

thanks for the help guys. sounds like its not going to be feasible. my idea was to mount the biggest electric winch I could get my hands on to some sort of elevated carriage behind the headache rack. attached to the frame so I could hook up to these things empty and deliver them. but it sounds like it would be more of a headache than its worth. my goal is to make the truck as versatile as possible but I run a lot of miles so the weight loss for the small gain probably wouldn't be worth it

 

I would think its not very likely to do those kinds of power only loads. At least with SLB and Hali and a regular road tractor isn't cutting it if you don't have 46k rears and heavy frame or an insert

 

Those sand kings and T belts are not light at all. Or were you talking about flowback tanks and half rounds

 

I dont know how common they are but I wouldn't think I would need 46k rears just to deliver empty trailers, and the ones that I've found so far are paying around 15 a mile just to deliver them to the customer