Straights vs. Tractor and Pup

Did the small sleeper thing and won't go back. so I pulled my paper work from one of my trucks and it comes in wet at just over 18.5k lbs (that's the light one). Looking at a 32 foot trailer, five years old and the sale dweeb doesn't know the weight. I'm thinking maybe 10k at the most ... maybe??

Seeing thawk wants to haul 30/35k which is a good target, I can't see the under 55k thing happening.

 

my last tractor was a freightliner century, pretty much fleet spec. high roof, dbl bunk. roomy enough for me though. wt. was in the 17.5 range. If you were looking at frt. in the 30/35K range in a 32' trailer would you run a 3,4 or 5 axle rig?

 

An E unit, by definition, is a tractor and 53' trailer.

 

Ok so what are the expedite designations for different sized trucks? All I've ever driven had 18 wheels so that's an E unit? D would be a class B straight truck, what size box? C, and how much freight can it haul? B ? And so on and so forth?

 

C is a short straight/cube van; B is a van/sprinter; A isn't even used anymore... used to be a mini van.

 

You might be able to get away with 4 axles, which if I did it, I'd have one axle on the trailer. However, I like the idea of 5 axles. I like the flexibility it gives, in case I get freight that has to go a certain way; or if I do LTL, and a light load is in the first 12', and oil totes take up the rest of the space, or something like that.

 

How about this for LTL: A 3 axle day cab, a 32' van, tandem axle with a lift gate.
Pretty good setup for 250 mile radius local work. yes/no?

 

That would be a nice setup, yes. If your work doesn't end up being that heavy, you could go single axle tractor/trailer or both. You could, if you wanted to, get under the FET. But I just looked it up, and anything over 70,000 is only 550 bux, or therebouts. It's not worth it to me, to handcuff myself, for that low of a fee. Saving money for tires, OTOH, could persuade me, IF a small percentage of my freight is really heavy...

 

OK here we go. I would go with a 5 axle setup. slider tandems on the trailer to offset the weight of a liftgate, and distribute weight. tandem tractor, sliding 5th wheel. seems to me with a short trailer, weight distribution would be critical. Then there are those pesky bridge laws to consider. Sound reasonable?

 

Liftgate doesn't weigh much. I don't know if they do sliders on something so short... or if you'd need them with 5 axles. It's less critical than with a 53'er, I would guess, since there isn't a wide gap without an axle under it... maybe 25'?