converter dolly shopping: air-ride vs spring, what else?

I don't know anything about that personally but have you looked into what gets used by companies like old Dominion that use sets for moving hhg?

 

FXG has two major types: with and without a spare. All are air ride. The one with the spare is hard as heck to yank around by hand. Forget it in the snow. Takes 3 people.

Yeah, a spare is nice, but its just a trailer tire. Go air ride, hand brake, no spare. Just my two cents from running them for 3 years straight.

 

And make sure the safety chains are really stout and the hooking clip won't give out on you. If there is no rack for hooking one set of pig/glad hands to, be prepared to use a rubber snubber.

 

Wide based singles , it greatly reduces the effort to move the dollies around . Half if not more.

 

Ok, same company as Miss Elvee above

weight matters, moving them around isn't hard, but it gets old and the heavier ones are noticeably harder to move. (impossible on even a slight incline).

Balance matters. better balanced ones are much easier to move around and hook up. (move it around by hand in the yard of the purchase place)

hand brake (rolling away into somebody's car is pretty much a career ender)

good (and easily replaceable) air lines and electrical cords. they take a lot of abuse.

air ride, no question.

Good axles. You can see the tires get destroyed on the crappy ones (or probably ones that people curbed) because they aren't straight anymore and the axles are slightly off. Some way to ensrue that they stay straight and if not easily fixed.

Regular old boring 5th wheel handle. One of those stupid lockable handles (either the lift up and push or the flip the lever out of the way) are simply almost impossible on a dolly. There's almost no room between the 5th wheel and the tire. It's actually the only thing I use my 5th wheel puller for is the dolly and it's about the one thing I look for when grabbing a dolly out of the yard. (Unless it's a meet and I don't have to pull the pin).

 

Only thing about spare tire is it usually helps offset the tongue weight


To the op they do make air ride dollys. I would go air ride with hhg

 

Not from the looks. I don't like that style fifth wheel handle. I would replace airlines with rubber lines. That little steel wheel for drop leg will be a pain to move around.