anyone ever convert a truck be to a Dump bed?

94BULLITT · Feb 16, 2013

Dr Dave said:
I saw a trailer that had a dump box on the front, 6' wide 8' long, 1' tall, mounted sideways. It dumped to the right side, skid steer on back half. I dont recall the manufacturer. This may be an option also.

Dave

2458n · Feb 16, 2013

This is a case for a dump trailer. A no brainer. The truck is a crew cab and you haul your help to the job. Dump trailer is perfect solution.

camshawn · Feb 16, 2013

you must weigh each axle of your truck and then read the door post and see how much you can legally carry. (If you are overweight and something goes wrong, you will loose big time.) This will tell you the window you can work within. How much the suspension moves is not relevant to what is legal. Once you have data, you can decide what will be best for you, a dump box, new truck, new trailer, no change, or contract out some material delivery.
Cam

yankeerider · Feb 17, 2013

To answer the original question, here's a copy of a post I made back in '08:
I put one of those Northern dump kits on my '93 F-250. Was not at all unhappy with it, but wouldn't do it to my new pickup. I got a lot of use out of it, hauling dirt, mulch, firewood, and building demolition debris. Here's a few things i didn't like about it:

There's no provision to secure the front of the bed to the chassis. So, when unloaded, you could see the front of the bed bounce up and down as you drove. Never did any harm that I could tell, but i didn't like it.

I had hoped to be able to fill the two fuel tanks through the filler doors by locating the fill hoses just inboard of the body. The curved shape of the bed made this impractical, and I typically raised the body to fuel. (it was cool, though, to see the reactions of some people when the bed rose.)

The manufacturer provided a worthless piece of cable to support the cylinder/scissors mechanism from hitting the rear end when the bed was down. I fab'd a substanial support out of angle iron that was far superior.

They recommend you fabricate a bracket to weld the rear bumper support to the bed hinges. I was afraid if someone ran into the back bumper it'd screw things up, so I located the bumper lower and further forward so it could be attached directly to the frame and not interfere with the tailgate when the bed was raised.

I wasn't concerned about the insurance implications, although others here have been. It was still just a 3/4 ton pickup being used non-commercially.

catskinner · Feb 17, 2013

I have a dump insert in my old GMC 2500. It works for what I need, mainly firewood and scrap metal. Have yet to try sand or gravel. I like the insert, I like the Bri-Mar model best, I have the Dumper Dogg Poly, it sits higher in the bed than I care for. It will dump 2500# of scrap without issue, and all the firewood I've piled up on it. Sand and gravel may be different. If you just need just a yard or two of sand, gravel its fine, but you will not want to do more. In landscaping, piling on brush and dumping in 30sec is great. You can not beat a big rig when you need a lot of material. Works great for mulch to.

aczlan · Feb 17, 2013

We had a stainless dump insert in an F350 that I worked with when I was at Trugreen (sat in the bed, had a pair of heavy cables going to the battery). It worked well (we mostly used it for mulch and tree/shrub trimmings though) and sat even with the top of the bed rails.

Aaron Z

crazyal · Feb 17, 2013

Decades ago I worked at a glass company that had a 3/4 ton GMC that was their one truck to use when hauling anything heavy to a job site. It would get so many crates of glass put into the back of it that you would swear the tires were going to rub on the fender wells inside the bed. One day we brought it to the local spring and chassis shop. What we got back was a tank. I know for a fact that it's had 3 tons plus in the back of it and handled it just fine. That would be the first step if it was my truck. Anyone here can tell what it could or can't handle, a good spring shop can tell you what they can safely make it handle.