I made a dump trailer (pics)

[Justin SE IOWA]

I took a flare box and made a gooseneck trailer for it. I used 2x4 tubing 1/4 wall. All gussets are 1/4" also. Hinge brackets and 1" pipe 3/16" wall and I put a greese zirk on each one. I have about 30 hours in it and built it on my lunch hour at work. I have hauled 6200lbs in it and it pulls like a dream!


The main frame


My axle


Axle mounted to frame



Uprights welded on


Top frame welded on


Gooseneck welded on



Jack off a semi. It didn't go low enough so I made an extenstion for it.


Frame done and painted



Fenders made from 1/8" sheet steal



1/2" EMT conduit for the taillight wires


Finished product
 

[bobpa]

Very nice job Justin. Looks good.
 

[Roger in Iowa]

Looks good!
Did you pull the axle shafts out and cut them off? Or you can just make a plate and seal the axle housing each end. Saves turning all the gears in the pumpkin. Could even gut the pumpkin and sell the parts.
 

[IrvIA]

That's really nice, especially the repurpose of a flare box wagon..nice and slick on the inside.

Irv
 

[johnpop1]

A few comments from the peanut gallery, if I may.
Your paint and attention to detail looks very
nice. I am suspicious that a 2x4 box tube will be
your undoing in the long run. There isn't enough
bending strength for the long haul. You may get
away with it under the box but I think that after
some hard miles with a load, you will get bending
in the tubes on the gooseneck. There is a reason
why the pros use heavy c channel. Like I said, it
looks really nice and will probably serve you well
if you only load it lightly.
 

[Puddles]

You better start thinking of how your going to build a truss to go on top of the gooseneck! When I built my gooseneck adapter I used 12x19 beams. It is only a 14,000-lb trailer.
 

[jon f mn]

I think that with the 1/4 wall tube that part will
be fine. He has the axle nearly centered so there
won.t be a lot of tonge weight, and he has it
gussetted right to take the pull. If there is a
problem it will be that he needs a cross member or
two in the gooseneck to keep them from flexing
from side pull. If he gets one of those wheels in
a hole or in the mud he could flex those tubes
sideways enough to be a problem. They could also
start to wobble from road vibration without the
stiffeners too. But over all a very well done rig.
 

[jon f mn]

I would also like to see 4 gussets in each of the corners of the uprights to keep that square. Again corners are going to put a lot of side pressure on that part. Anytime you stress a structure to it's max like here you have to have the support structure perfect to keep everything straight. I would hate to see something this nice fail for lack of a couple little missing pieces.
 

[Brad Buchanan]

Hey Justin.

Beautiful work!

I like to use square or rectangle tubing also. It looks great and is stronger than c-channel in regards to twisting and odd angle loads.

Great attention to detail and a machine to be proud of.

Brad
 

[Puddles]

Here is a uniform load chart for 2”x4” with 3/8” wall rectangular tube. Remember now these are static loads, I have no idea what dynamic loads would be! These are also in kips.
So lets say he has an 8-feet span, take the lower number of 6.4. Generally with these uniform load charts you divide in half for point loads, which that is what we have here. So now we have 3.2. But we have two pieces of rectangular tube, so we are back up to 6.4. So that is six thousand 400 pounds of static load. Anybody want to calculate for a dynamic load?


 

[jon f mn]

Here's a trailer I built with 2x4x1/4 tube. It's
still in use after about 18 years.

 

[Dick L]

If it were mine which it aint. I would load er up and see what happened. If it started to flex pulling under load I would cut out the front gussets, knotch the back gussets to take a rail like you have and weld it under the top one. Re weld the front gussets back under. and touch up the nice red paint. When the wheels hit a rut in the field loaded would be when it might flex down more than expected if it is going to.
 

[cd1]

For only 6200 lbs in the bed I think you will be fine. The only thing I personally would have done different is a larger gusset at the front of the main frame into the vertical tubes but I can see why you didn't as your bed would have hit them which you could have used flat iron to basically truss out around the corner but in all reality you will probably be fine. I think a lot of people on here would be amazed at how light most commercial trailers are. There is a balance between weight and load capacity, if you over build it like crazy that just takes away from your cargo capacity for no reason.
 

[Puddles]

cd1 you might want to look at what a professionally built gooseneck trailer looks like.

http://www.pjtrailers.com/trailers/goosenecks/

http://bigtextrailers.com/trailers/goosenecks.html
 

[jon f mn]

Here ya go. My degree comes from the school of hard knocks and life lessons. It's certified by real life experience and a few pictures for you.