75% of truck owners tow 1/year or less?

[WinterDeere]

You’re in a different world I guess.
I use 3 places around here.
2 of them use loaders with 8’ buckets, and the operators scoop the side of piles to load basically 1/2 the bucket which they drop in against the front of your bed.
The third place uses printout sheets of specific vehicle capacities to determine how much they’ll sell you, then then drive over to their lineup of buckets and quick attach the right size buckets, 1 yard, 1/2 yard or 1/3 yards.
They do this daily for 1/2 ton pickups,to cars pulling little lawn trailers or whatever.
It’s not a big deal

Cool. Yeah, definitely a different world. I only know one local place here that will do less than full yards, and their selection and stock is more limited. Their smallest bucket is 1 yard, but they will "eyeball" a fraction of that, if you ask.

Most other places here will only do 1 yard or 3 yard increments, and those 3 yard buckets must be something like 10 - 12 feet wide. Even the 1 yard buckets are almost 8 feet wide, meaning loading against the front wall of your bed is going to be a challenge, as the bucket is too wide to dump from the rear of the truck and get more than half the product in the bed.

Delivery is usually the best option for stone, since it beats the hell out anything you're hauling it in. But short of that, a $3k trailer beats a $45k truck on capacity, volume, and cost of damage, specifically when hauling stone.

 

[LittleBittyBigJohn]

Just to piggy back on the load size conversation above. I've gotten sand before at our local... sandery? They used the giant - bend in the middle - payloader to load my 1/2 ton. The operator just loaded up the corner of the bucket and quit when my truck squatted enough then charged by weight.

 

[Too many Kubotas]

Most other places here will only do 1 yard or 3 yard increments, and those 3 yard buckets must be something like 10 - 12 feet wide.

At least 12 feet wide at our local gravel pit.

Needed a little road base and the only suitable trailer I had here at the time was the little 10' dump. The loader operator was nice and didn't want any to bounce onto my tailgate, letting the excess spill over at the rear instead, which could only lead to one thing. Negative tongue weight.

I could tell from looking at it that it'd be an interesting drive. Thankfully short, but still. Sure enough, there's a mild downhill close to the house and that's where the trailer started doing its thing. With surge brakes and not much under the hood there was little I could do.

It was the only time I was grateful to have torsion axles as they almost turned the trailer into a single axle, which must have helped a bit. Next time I needed gravel I had a 16' gooseneck dump and pulled it with the Pete. Much better, even with a very overloaded trailer.

 

[Sprinkler Fitter]

Why have to buy and register a car and a trailer when I can just use the truck?
A trailer would need enclosed sides too because I’ve gotten loads of compost and crushed rock, as a couple examples

Why argue with these guys? They don’t need trucks and think nobody should have trucks. I have a brother in law that treats me the same as some of these on this forum.

He don’t like motorcycles, nobody should have a motorcycle.

He is retired and goes to Florida for the winter and says that I am nuts staying in Minnesota all winter.

He drives an older vehicle so everybody should drive older vehicles.

He can lose weight eating yogurt and berries so everybody should be able to do the same thing

He bought a convertible two years ago and he asked me if I have ever tried a convertible. I asked him if riding motorcycle for the past 50 years or having jeeps the past 45 years counted as having a convertible. He has a car convertible so I’m not sure if I’m doing it correct.

 

[ultrarunner]

Cool. Yeah, definitely a different world. I only know one local place here that will do less than full yards, and their selection and stock is more limited. Their smallest bucket is 1 yard, but they will "eyeball" a fraction of that, if you ask.

Most other places here will only do 1 yard or 3 yard increments, and those 3 yard buckets must be something like 10 - 12 feet wide. Even the 1 yard buckets are almost 8 feet wide, meaning loading against the front wall of your bed is going to be a challenge, as the bucket is too wide to dump from the rear of the truck and get more than half the product in the bed.

Delivery is usually the best option for stone, since it beats the hell out anything you're hauling it in. But short of that, a $3k trailer beats a $45k truck on capacity, volume, and cost of damage, specifically when hauling stone.

Arrived at the quarry with my 6 cylinder Valiant and home made box trailer and the operator said they could not accommodate as it was full size rigs for the new freeway and airport expansion.
I asked if he read the newspaper about complaints on the quarry trucks… he said yes…

I said I’m the guy they quoted in support of the quarry…

He said I can’t charge you but we will give you the rock free…

Made three trips that day and on the last I brought a case of beer to thank them and all was good

 

[paulsharvey]

Wish dump trailers were a bit more reasonably priced. Even completely trashed, they are still $3500+ locally for a 7000# one...

 

[ArlyA]

We have one trailer. Wish we had more but they require space and $$.

 

[paulsharvey]

These aren't what I mean by trashed; looks like these are the two cheapest currently available near me (by near I mean like 100 miles). I assume any of the really rough ones got snagged up by storm debris guys.

 

[ultrarunner]

I built mine... 5x9 with a camper jack to raise.

A little slow but works like a charm.

It was when I was at the tool and die and the owner allowed employees to come in Saturday mornings for pet projects...

I miss having the run of a full shop... The gantry crane made it easy to flip for perfect mig welds...

 

[Jstpssng]

They call it a trailer.

I drive about 50k miles per year. There is no way I'm going to drag a trailer around just because somebody else doesn't think I should have a truck.