Trailer setup

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Dabug

Member
Oct 21, 2018
40
Monroe County Pa
I'm looking to replace my old 5 by 10 utility trailer for one to handle 2 ton. Two options is tilt deck or utility trailer. Wondering if pallets will slide off a tilt deck trailer? Will pallet jack get stuck from either trailer because of ramp angle? Anyone used similar methods
 
My guess is the stack of bags will fall over before the pallet slides off. Anybody want to wager?
 
Will require Machine or Manual Labor. Be interesting to see if greasing the trailer deck would do. But I have my doubts on that too. If you try before you load em up. Lots of grease.
 
Oh they’ll slide all right but you may need to pull. Is there an anchor point that you can tie the pallet to and then drive away?

Lay a sheet or 5 of visqueen plastic on the deck before setting the pallet. It’ll slip.

Cool thread btw.

Anybody have experience with cheap manual forklifts? Maybe lifting the pallets with some sort of cherry picker or overhead hoist?
 
I used to pry the pallet up with a big pry bar.one corner at a time and put 3/4 inch pipe 5 ft long under it. You can push it off by hand once you have it on rollers. You have to load the pallet in the right direction, You need 3 pieces of pipe .
They make manual pallet jacks however my drive way was gravel so I don't know how well this would work.
 
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When a well known safe company in these parts move safes around on carpet they use strips of plastic. They were white so I suspect they were most likely Teflon.
Set strips down on tilt deck trailer and lower pallets onto the strips and tie them down good.
There also this thing called a pallet puller. One could also wrap a strap around the pallet and tie it off to any object and drive away.
 
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Whitewater rafters will often screw strips of PTFE (Teflon) to our trailers to help the rafts slide out. Of course you have to countersink the heads and orient the strips the correct way so the load will slide.
 
I have a Harbor Freight Pallet jack and it works just fine. It moves 1 ton pallets quite easily. If you're going to use it on a tilt trailer DO NOT GET IN FRONT of the pallets when moving them. Once they start down the ramp the only way to stop them is set them back down. If your trailer has a plywood floor you might have to reinforce it as the weight it put on the 4 wheels and tends to overload the plywood.

Ron
 
Update on trailer. I ordered 16 ft car trailer to handle 3 ton. Bought winch rated for 12,000 lbs. Trailer has dovetailed with 5ft diamond plate ramps. Using snatch block to pull pallets off trailer then pallet jack into garage.
 
Three things to watch for. Be sure they load pallets from the back so that the bottom “runners” are parallel to the trailer floorboards. Watch the top of the dovetail, there will be a steel lip there and the pallets will need to get up on and then teeter on the start of that dovetail. Finally, diamond plate ramps are made to be grippy so they may slow down the pull.

Sounds fun. If nothing else, you can at least get 3 tons home in one shot. Plus maybe one in the truck.
 
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Three things to watch for. Be sure they load pallets from the back so that the bottom “runners” are parallel to the trailer floorboards. Watch the top of the dovetail, there will be a steel lip there and the pallets will need to get up on and then teeter on the start of that dovetail. Finally, diamond plate ramps are made to be grippy so they may slow down the pull.

Sounds fun. If nothing else, you can at least get 3 tons home in one shot. Plus maybe one in the truck.
Just getting 3 ton home in one trip will be worth it. Always looking for easy way of doing stuff, get wiser with age.