5030tinkerer
Gold Member
The "stuck while delivering topsoil" thread tangent about paying by the yard or ton got me thinking about another problem - preventing your trailer from being overloaded. I have a 5x10 steel bed utility trailer with an axle, hubs, leaf springs, and tires designed for a 3500# load. I don't know how much the trailer itself weighs, but I'd guess in the 600-800# range, leaving me with 2700-2900# for payload. I went to the gravel yard the other day to pick up some 1" limestone. They weighed me in and sent me over to the rock piles to get loaded. At the point that the trailer "looked" like it was beginning to bow down with the weight, I had the loader stop. When I drove to the scale, I learned that I had picked up 4100# of rock. While the trailer drove just fine for the 15 mile or so journey back, this extra load surely couldn't have been good for it. Any ideas on how to prevent this in the future?
Each product density is different, so you can't use volume of material as a guide. All I can think of is getting down low during the loading and keeping an eye on the leaf springs to see how they are holding up (at 4100#, they were near flat). The tires themselves maybe squatted just slightly. You guys know that those huge loaders only take a few token seconds to take you from empty to way overfull. Any tips out there?
I haven't found any yards set up to load you at the scale.
Each product density is different, so you can't use volume of material as a guide. All I can think of is getting down low during the loading and keeping an eye on the leaf springs to see how they are holding up (at 4100#, they were near flat). The tires themselves maybe squatted just slightly. You guys know that those huge loaders only take a few token seconds to take you from empty to way overfull. Any tips out there?
I haven't found any yards set up to load you at the scale.