jon f mn
Well-known Member
Several have aske what the answer was to the design flaw question yesterday so here it is. The trailer was designed for a customer that had an employee hurt his back lifting ramps. Some trailer builders had started to put together tilt trailers to address that problem. The fault with those is there was no where to put attachments and other stuff and still be able to get the skidloader on and off. So this was my answer. You can put all your stuff on the front and still load and unload the skid from the back. It was designed to back the loader on which would position it correctly over the axles. It has had 3 owners so far and ALL of them have refused to back the loaders on. I don't really know why, but they won't. The first flaw was made worse by this and that is that the ramp part is to steep. You can easily get on if you back on, but driving forward was tough if the deck was slippery. So to fix that I took out the straight axles and put in 4" drop axles. That lowered it enough to work great no matter how they loaded. The other problem was the 4" tube across the back. When they try to drive on the front wheels climb it easily, but when the rear wheels hit the tube it would try to tip back. So I cut the tube off and replaced it with a 2x2x1/4" angle to support the boards and moved the lights to the side. This eliminated the center ID lights which makes it technically illegal, but it's been through several dot inspections and has never been ticketed for that.
Also some asked about the tilt. The rear section is made to almost perfectly balance with just a slight preference to the rear. So when it's empty and you want to load you pull the spring loaded latch and it will just drop down in the back. If you want to bring it up for transport you just walk up it and it tilts down and latches. When you load the skid loader you just drive or back on til it over centers and it drops down and latches. Yes you do have to go slow and cautious when driving on and off right at the tip point so you don't go to fast.
As for the axles being to far forward that some mentioned that's because of the length needed for loading and all three owners knew and had no problem with thinking of that part as just ramps and not for hauling so the axles were in a good spot if you take that into account.
Also some asked about the tilt. The rear section is made to almost perfectly balance with just a slight preference to the rear. So when it's empty and you want to load you pull the spring loaded latch and it will just drop down in the back. If you want to bring it up for transport you just walk up it and it tilts down and latches. When you load the skid loader you just drive or back on til it over centers and it drops down and latches. Yes you do have to go slow and cautious when driving on and off right at the tip point so you don't go to fast.
As for the axles being to far forward that some mentioned that's because of the length needed for loading and all three owners knew and had no problem with thinking of that part as just ramps and not for hauling so the axles were in a good spot if you take that into account.