Trucks that tow
Continuing our exploration of industrial equipment, today: trucks. Specifically, let’s talk about trucks that move equipment.
When we discuss trucks you can put large things on the simplest answer is a fixed flatbed truck. It is a truck, with a bed that is flat (some have sides — a stake truck).
Flatbed trucks have the advantage of being the simplest configuration of truck, widely available (and adaptable), and having a good ground clearance. They have the disadvantage of having no clear way to load or unload equipment. The equipment either needs to be lifted off, or there needs to be a dock height loading/unloading facility.
In addition to straight trucks, fixed flatbeds are also commonly seen as semi-trailers.
More advanced than the fixed flatbed, a ramp truck or a beavertail truck has a bed which slopes down at the rear and generally includes pull-out or fold-down ramps to allow loading and unloading. This gives the obvious advantage of being able to load and unload without dedicated facilities or equipment.
Beavertail trailers are widely available; a beavertail trailer pulled by a dump truck is essentially the defacto standard for moving heavy equipment — so common that some states/provinces have special provisions for the length of dump truck and trailer combos. Some beavertail trailers have movable bogeys (where the wheels are) — to load or unload the trailer brakes are set to lock the wheels, then the trailer is pushed back until the wheels move far enough forward for the tail to touch the ground.
If your thoughts up until now have been “flat bed trucks are tow-trucks, aren’t they?” — you’re thinking of tilt-bed trucks (or tilt-tray trucks formally). Tilt-tray trucks are widely used for automotive float service (ok, most can also tow), but they’re also used in the same role as beaver-tail trucks to deliver equipment to job sites. They have the advantage of being incredibly prevalent, including winching capability, and usually quite affordable to hire (having low utilization in a recovery role).
Tilt-tray trailers exist as well (commonly called teeter-trailers or tippy-trailers) with either powered tilt or gravity tilt; in a gravity tilt trailer, the equipment is just moved on the trailer until the center-of-gravity causes the trailer to tilt on it’s own accord.
Distinct from the flatbed trailer, is the lowboy trailer which is, well, not flat. The lowboy has a lower deck to both lower the center-of-gravity but also to allow carrying larger equipment. Some lowboys are configured with a beavertail or ramps but most are designed as some form of detachable gooseneck trailer where the forward portion of the trailer can be removed to bring the front of the low-portion level with the ground and allow easy on or off loading.
Roll-off trucks may have started by being used for dumpsters, but they’re not used with an enormous assortment of attachments including flatbed sleds used to move equipment. In addition to being infinitely variable with different types of attachments, roll-off trucks used with a flat-bed sled are very well suited to moving equipment with all of the advantages of tilt-bed trucks and flatbed trucks but with the low-boy advantage that the sled is essentially ground-level when the equipment is loaded and the advantage that (because the sled is detachable) the equipment can be rigged for transport without the truck waiting and the truck operator and the equipment operator don’t need to be present at the same time.
The existence of dedicated flatbed sleds, of course, doesn’t mean that dumpster-type containers aren’t still widely used to transport any equipment which fits in them.
Of course, you can still get creative and just put the equipment directly in a dump truck.
