Dana Linscott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: "The sliding frame lowboys I was referring to in an earlier post are used for transport of large farm equipment in the US and are not the types later posters described. These are very simple to build and sturdy. They do not have drop tails but rather are flat.
The axles are mounted on a sliding subframe which by unlatching the pins holding it to the main frame and dropping in pins to prevent wheel rotation allow the main frame to be slid back by backing the tow vehicle." Bloody brilliant. And besides cheapness, the obvious advantage over side-loaders is the possibility of extracting a container from tight places. "The majority of the trailers I have seen have high flotation tires(to allow use on unimproved roads and fields) and a simple but sturdy suspension. While not designed for high speed I have used them myself at 50 mph which I would consider the max top speed." This is the part I don't get. Conventional low-pressure tires tend to be large in diameter, which in turn requires a lot of clearance from the ground. How do they get around this? Not that it really matters, now that I think of it - it's easy to carry matting or planks along for moving the trailer a short distance off a compacted surface. "You may also wish to consider reinforcing the container and attaching three legged supports near the corners which could be swung down or carried along and assembled when the unit is moved on a flatbed." As long as it's handled by the corners, reinforcement should not be necessary, so I would just make the supports removable and attach them to the lower corners for handling. I like this idea - I was fumbling for something similar but could not get the stability I wanted. Low trailer plus tripod wins the day! " Simple hydraulic jacks could then be used to raise the container up the required few inches to a foot so that the trailer could be pulled out." That part's easy - it was lowering the container to the pad afterward that I could not figure out. Building up the pad to meet the container, plus a low trailer height, solve this problem. "If you constructed a trailer which allows the side of the container to extend out a foot or so from the edge of the trailer you could even simply use hydraulic jacks and blocking to raise and lower the container. This is what I did for my houseboat (14 ton) and after a little practice I could unload it in about half an hour by myself. 15 minutes with help. 2 jacks= $60us and blocking (cut up old railroad ties) $80us. Set directly upon the blocking it is quite stable." As long as one is building equipment for the purpose, it makes sense to do the tripod thing and save a lot of labor and danger! "Unless you have several containers to move I wonder if your best bet would not be to simply construct a robust trailer and leave the unit on it. " Exactly what my father-in-law wants to do with my personal trailer. As for the BD plant, it probably makes more sense here to build it on a trailer in the first place. Still, containers have obvious advantages in any scheme that involves centralized production of plants, which might very well be needed for viability in the long term. "Our group has decided to use a heavy 20' flatbed trailer and weld reinforcing "skids" to the bottom of the container which allow the wheel wells of the trailer to fit under the bottom of the container. This will allow the trailer to be used for other things as well (gathering WVO). We will then construct a low platform (about 3' high)with railroad ties and soil at each place we intend to place the container. The container will simply be winched on and off the trailer." The skids will of course make the container non-shippable by ocean - at least not as a standard container. I gather that doesn't matter. "If need be we can simply pull up the timbers and scatter the soil to abandon a site...and reuse the timbers. " Exactly. Again, many thanks! Marc de Piolenc Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Please do NOT send "unsubscribe" messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
