Gooseneck trailer moving

frankr2994 · Mar 5, 2022

Hi everyone. So we bought an 80s satoh buck 470d tractor for the shop. Mainly for snow removal. It was restored a few years back and has a snow plow and a 3pt. Only thing for the snow is we put chains on the back.its 4wd with independent brakes. Little tank of a machine. Lately everyone and their brother has been dropping off race cars for us to work on. Our lot is full of enclosed trailers. The lot not being that big it became difficult for me to hook up with a truck to park them. Adding a 2 inch receiver 3pt attachment to it to move some of them. The attachment is overkill built. Much heavier than I thought a cat 1 attachment needs to be. We got all the tags moved. Some of them required a second person standing on the plow to keep the front end down. As the trailers had a car inside. So we have a 400lb ballast made of concrete drying right now to pin on the front to replace the plow. Tested 1st with water to try. 2ply front tires weren't up to it so just got in some 6ply. So now for the trailer that we didn't try. It's a 48ft gooseneck enclosed tri axle. It was one of the first trailers that shown up. Parked it with the customers truck and did a 18pt turn to get the truck out from in front of it. With the other trailers now it would be even more difficult to hook back up. My question is can I make some sort of dolly or load assist for my 3pt to move this thing? I know that I can't just go over and put the ball under it and go. Our attachment does have a 2 5/16 ball welded on top for it. What I thought about was using a pair of independent torsion axles attached to the bottom of the 3pt attachment with some small trailer wheels. Scenario would be is hold the 3pt lever down and have someone lower the trailer. It would compress the torsion axles then bump the hydraulics up some just to weight the rear axle of the tractor down some. Pipe dream?

Rustyiron · Mar 5, 2022

I think a "crazy wheel" like you see on the back of a bush Hog fitted to the hitch you made up would support the weight provided that it was on hard ground or had a big enough footprint. At that point the tractor is only keeping the hitch upright and rolling it around.
The trick might be the various heights between trailers. Incorporating a heavy jack possibly a full size trailer "landing gear'' size comes to mind with the wheel mounted to it.
Maybe a shop forklift is in your future.

We used to move regular 5th wheel trailers with a 10,000# forklift with a little rig that fastened to the forks and had a short length of 4"x4" that would fit around the king pin and gravity kept it there. You'll need a heavy enough lift to carry the load out at the tips of the forks so that you have turning clearance between the trailer body and the forks carriage.
Just throwing out thoughts

frankr2994 · Mar 5, 2022

I thought about the crazy wheel. Problem is I need tongue weight so the 3rd wheel needs to be sprung. The trailers are parked in gravel. We have a fork lift. A 36v that weighs about 10k....won't move on gravel and 4 low in my Nissan pickup requires alot of throttle to get it out of quickly made ruts. We had the lot filled with 1b limestone because of how it packs. When we got the fork I drove it down the lot and it was fine. My partner yelled at me to stop and try starting again. That couple second pause made it just sink down.

franklin2 · Mar 12, 2022

I am not a fan of crazy wheels. They have their applications, but they need to be kept perfectly plumb to work correctly. If not they have a tendency to steer the wrong way. And they need to pivot when you change directions from forward to reverse. This always causes some binding and will try to shift your apparatus to the side till the wheel gets turned around.

But I think the crazy wheel idea came from the need for your support wheels to be able to follow the tractor hitch. When the tractor makes a sharp turn, the support wheels will be sliding sideways. Both support wheels will have to be a "crazy" design of some sort if you want to make a turn.

The only thing I see working would be to make a short tall trailer frame and use a ball hitch on the tractor. There would be a small amount of tongue weight on the tractor depending your axle placement. But for the most part the tractor would just push and pull. Back the little trailer under the 5th wheel or goosneck hitch which would be built on the little trailer, and lower the big trailer down onto it. It should tow forward great, but it might get out of wack backing up, since you would have the pivot on the tractor ball and the pivot on the large trailer hitch together.