Side panels for flatbed

[dberry]

Newbie here again,

I've got an 18' flatbed trailer and need to move some household goods. I'm thinking 3' tall walls will be good for general purpose hauling. I can use the extra 12" pieces of the plywood for concrete forms so they won't go to waste. Is there any advantage to having full 48" walls for hauling stuff? Once my stuff is moved, I'd be content with 12" sidewalls for hauling gravel etc. Someone posted some real nice pics of a trailer with full sheet plywood walls. I just am not sure if that is needed for most house-hold goods. Any tips on this would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Daniel

 

[BTDT]

Welcome to TBN. How far will you be hauling your stuff? I would just leave it full sheets till you got everything moved, then you can cut it when the time comes. If you cut it before the move, won't you have to haul the cut pieces too?

My .03 cents (inflation and all that )

 

[George2615]

3' high sides you mentioned would be easier to cover with a tarp and secure with straps or rope.
I framed up and old single axle trailer for my neighbor with 1 1/2" angle steel and he bolted on 4x8 plywood. He does scrapping / recycling and wanted the full 4' height. I don't see any advantage of 4' over 3' high sides for general hauling of household goods. The higher the sides are, the more chance there is you may overload the trailer.

 

[dberry]

I'll be hauling it about 60 miles. It took 15 trips with a 1 ton pickup to put it all in storage. About 20000 pounds (lot of heavy tools). I figure 3 or 4 trips with the trailer should about do it. I'm moving the stuff from 2 20x10 storage sheds to my land.

I can also use the truck bed to put the light bulky stuff. Trailer is rated for 14K, but after subtracting the weight of the trailer, I'm down to about 11.5K. I'll only put about 5 or 6K on it at a time splitting the heavy stuff between loads and try to keep the heavy bits over the axle.

I'll try and post a pic when I'm done building it. I'm modeling it after one of the other trailers someone here built.

Any tips would be great.

Oh, something I didn't think about at the time when I bought my trailer... I had a 2" ball mounted for pulling another lighter trailer. Dealer helped me hook up the new trailer and didn't check. The trailer requires a 2 5/16 ball. I had it chained up properly, but if I hadn't read the manual, I might have been in trouble with it loaded. I'm not sure of the tolerance of those things, but the dealer should have checked, and I should have thought about it too.

Live and learn...