Could You Use a DumpKing?
As we plan for the ideal mix or products for sale and rent at our Cart-Away Supply locations, we would like your feedback on a few key items. Our DumpKing trailer may be the most important tool we can make available to our customers. Here are some of the uses we see and then a few questions.
The dump king is ideal for delivering to the jobsite most of the materials you will need for most projects. Bulk materials like bark, soil, sand and rock can be too heavy or too difficult to load and unload from the back of a pickup truck. A self dumping trailer allows you to put the material where you want it without having to manually shovel it out of the truck. It also allows you to haul up to 3 to 5 times as much as you can haul in a pickup.
It is also a useful tool to haul off the green waste from pruning, tree removal and similar activities. It could have ramps so that it could be used to haul small tractors and large walk-behind tools like tillers, aerators, etc.
Current plans are to have the DumpKing capable of carrying up to 5.5 cubic yards of material (covered) with a weight of up to about 8,000 pounds (over 4 times the capacity of a one ton pickup truck). That would make the trailer bed approximately 12 feet long, 6 feet wide and 2 feet deep.
Is this too large? Too Small? Is there a better size?
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Comments on Could You Use a DumpKing? »
Tim Hill @ 8:08 am
There are limitations on what a pick-up truck can haul by law and that varies by state. Complying with the law is certainly a concern, but more importantly, giving a customer or employee a tool that can allow them to overload their vehicle, especially if they are inexperienced as one would expect a weekend diyer to be, could have serious liabilities.
Would I need to limit customers to 3/4 ton? That would make my market smaller.
Should I have a 1-ton dually for rent? That increases costs and risk.
What are the maintenance costs?
What are the insurance costs?
What are the typical damages customers cause?
We live in northern Idaho — what happens when these units are taken on rough roads, steep inclines? Ice? Snow?
Ice and snow would have obvious implications: don't rent/use under these conditions. But then I could be out of business for 5 - 6 months out of the year up here.
One experienced worker I know recently had an accident with a trailer due to ice. Lesson: a surge break doesn't work on ice, down hill, with a load. Also, they don't work when the pick-up is uphill, especially if the road surface is slippery or loose.
Compatability with braking systems: electric brakes are best vs. surge brakes, I think, but they need to be tuned for each customer or brakes/tires can be destroyed. Problem is that tuning changes when load changes once they've rolled away from the yard. Is there an "auto-tune"? I've seen a brake controller that plugs into a cigarette lighter, but it didn't work consistently with my vehicle — I had to end up just pulling it out and going with no trailer brakes. Not a good idea, but the pressure for a trailer user to get the job done, especially when under a time = money rental mentality, can engender less than safe practices.
Can the trailers have drop-down sides? This allows use of forklift material handling equipment for palleted material, such as landscape pavers, etc.
These are targeted for small projects with small runs. I'm not sure if a 5 yd dump truck might be better, or maybe if they could run together and perhaps be rented out, provided the load was under 26K (i.e., non-commercial.)
12-foot may be too small if we co-rent skid steers, small excavators, and attachments.