Making a trailer longer...?

B

born2cut

Location
Texas
Any trailer guys care to chime in on this one. I'm good with the welder, and have access to any kind of materials needed. But I'm not familiar with designing trailers. So I want to hear from the trailer design and safety aspect from someone with expertise...

I'm going to keep things simple...I posted another thread about deciding on a set-up. I'm going to leave that in the other thread. Long story short, I'm mounting a small chipper (6-9") on the front of a brand new 16 ft. big-tex dump trailer. A bigger chipper is not an option due to weight.
Selling the trailers not an option. And I'm absolutely not swapping to a chip-truck for the tiny operation I'm going to run.

So here I am....Looking for ideas on helping with trailer design. It's obvious with my trailer, extending or adding about 60" is going to be best achieved on the front side. Extending the tongue, and building a frame to mount the chipper. That's the easy part.

What I'm concerned about is the weight distribution. I'd imagine by adding on to the front of the trailer and attaching a chipper I will need to do some figuring before fab.

Empty the trailer will be tongue heavy. 2,000-3,000 lbs. on front (chipper).

With the chipper and trailer weight included, I'll have 6,000 lbs. of carrying capacity. Which means I can carry at least 10 yards on the trailer. Which is more chips then I produce on a daily basis. On an average day I'd say (4) yards of chips, on a above average day (8-10) yards.

Which would work perfect for me. My concern is how should I set the trailer up? As far as, should I move the axles? It will a bit front heavy empty, and a bit back heavy loaded.
 
If you extend the tounge of the trailer you will need to move the axles. Most hitches (especially on pick up trucks) are only class 3 or class 4. The class 3 is rated to be able to tow 10k with a max tounge weight of 1k when use for weight distributing. The 4 is good for 14k tounge weight of 1400 under the same conditions. Any way you cook it you are over that tounge weight and will need to do some figuring before cutting into a shiny new dump trailer.

Rating source: http://www.reese-hitches.com/learning_center/general-towing-classes
 
classictruckman said:
Why not just add an axle in front of the others? Keep your carrying capacity up and your tongue weight down.
Click to expand...

It's funny you mentioned that. I was actually thinking about that, just adding a third axle. I just didn't want to sound foolish not knowing what I was talking about. So adding a third axle would aid with lengthening the tongue without issues?

I liked the first idea, about making the box shorter and sticking with the original frame lay-out. But that is going to take me from 16' of cargo down to about 11'. The bonus to this is you would be removing a lot of the steel from the top of the trailer. (A lot of weight) Which could potentially open up more options for chippers.
 
From your earlier descriptions of your business, you probably won't need 16' of box. 11' will be plenty if you do mostly trim work.
Will also keep the overall length down.
 
I've seen a custom built setup like this i think it's only a 10ft box chipper in front and storage between the chipper and dump ......its long and I wasent sold on the whole weight distribution of it .... Seems like it would be wicked front heavy unloaded and rear heavy when full ...... It's like your fighting a teater totter. But he likes it and it works for what he's doing ( two man operation small removals and pruning ) I did like that it's all one unit just hook up and go to work looks impressive and shiny too

Jesse
 
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