Tractor/Trailer/Forklift combo recommendations?

what part of the country are you in..??

snow country? hot country?

you have to take into consideration of ice/snow on the flatbed, and how to remove it...salt, sand, shovel off, if it cakes up with ice, how you gonna chop that up? this comes into play for the longevity of the trailer flooring, etc..

 

you'd never make it in snow country...lol

 

Pictured you have a Princeton PiggyBack... the PB55 is a 5500 lb machine, you'd have to go up to the PB70, 7,000 lb machine to get your 6,000 lbs. If your not familiar with PiggyBacks, make sure that you can get your max lift with the forks extended...

I'm not much help to ya... but I have built and installed a lot of the "receptacle's" for hooking up the forklifts to the back of trailers and flatbeds. I would personally never even consider putting one on an aluminum trailer, although I'm sure enough do it. Of course I'm a little biased, and think aluminum should have stayed as an exclusive pop/beer can making material...

 

Mac will build an aluminum flat with a moffett pocket, maybe manac will I don’t recall- most aluminum trailer manufacturers won’t, and from my experience, outfitters won’t install on aluminum after the fact bc of cracking concerns.


OP far as I’m aware, most manufacturers make moffett trailers 32’ or longer. I think you’ll find your tare weight vs the bridge law on a 24’ trailer will be prohibitive for carrying capacity.

 

The basics you should be concerned with is 51’ 1-5 axle spacing (outer bridge) and 36’ 2-5 axle spacing (inner bridge). That’s the shortest 5 axle combo that can scale 80k everywhere.

If you want to go with a shorter trailer and still scale 80k you need to add axles. With a 3 axle trailer you could shorten to a 32’ inner bridge.

If you’re not hauling 24’ plus products I would look into a truck and pup trailer. easy to get into neighborhood and can still scale a full load. Only have a partial load? Leave the pup at the yard. You can even preload the pup while the truck is gone to speed up the reload time.

 

I agree with everything you said, with the exception that if you have a truck and pup trailer, you could set up the truck with both a pintle and a Moffett set up, as I have had one set up that way. But I really doubt you’d find a truck and pup trailer set up/ with a moffet set up on the pup. That would ride like straight #### when empty.

Also the tare weight on a truck & trailer would be higher than tractor and trailer set up. I think you are on the right track regarding preloading, I think it would be ideal to have one tractor, one moffet, and two trailers that could both be used, so one can always be in the yard preloading. Probably make more sense to have two trailers the same rather than one shorter and one longer, because whichever one is On the road would be the one that you needed to have in the yard to load. Leastways that’s how it goes for me lol