Old Pickup bed as trailer

[ron45]

Hello, is this a good idea for a DIY dirt hauling trailer to use w/kioti? Some one is giving me an old truck axle. Don't know the make yet. I want to be able to use the loader bucket to tow, and raise the tongue to empty the trailer. I figure the truck sized tires and some suspension should get the bed up high enough to dump it by raising the tongue. Is there a hitch configuration what would make raising via the ball easier. That seems to be the iffy spot in my idea.

It would be easy to burn a hole for a 2" hitch. But I'm unsure if you could dump it by just raising it with the hitch ball and bucket. It's a fairly nebulous idea right now. I do own a welder, but I'm not a very good welder. Pickup beds should be fairly easy to find. But I have no idea what people pay for them. Anyone done this or something simpler. I don't want to get into a separate hydraulic system for dumping the thing. I have a mile of road that needs material in places. I am thinking that a trailer save so much back and forth w/kioti.

 

[k0ua]

Hello, is this a good idea for a DIY dirt hauling trailer to use w/kioti? Some one is giving me an old truck axle. Don't know the make yet. I want to be able to use the loader bucket to tow, and raise the tongue to empty the trailer. I figure the truck sized tires and some suspension should get the bed up high enough to dump it by raising the tongue. Is there a hitch configuration what would make raising via the ball easier. That seems to be the iffy spot in my idea.

It would be easy to burn a hole for a 2" hitch. But I'm unsure if you could dump it by just raising it with the hitch ball and bucket. It's a fairly nebulous idea right now. I do own a welder, but I'm not a very good welder. Pickup beds should be fairly easy to find. But I have no idea what people pay for them. Anyone done this or something simpler. I don't want to get into a separate hydraulic system for dumping the thing. I have a mile of road that needs material in places. I am thinking that a trailer save so much back and forth w/kioti.

This is just my opinion but were you planning on pushing the trailer you make backwards with the bucket on the Front end loader.. I am thinking that is going to suck . Or where you thinking of towing it from the drawbar then unhitching it and dumping it with the Loader bucket. I am a little unclear of your plan.

James K0UA

 

[not2old]

I have a trailer made from an old 3/4 ton Ford. I cut the frame and formed a tongue without modifying the box/frame. It will not dump with my loader without a lot of trouble. I have to get it centred perfectly and then lift until the trailer is standing on it's bumper to get gravel to come out and then move it a little and do it again. It just isn't worth the effort. Making the trailer with a shorter rear overhang is necessary and then a small loader might not lift it. I'm planning to add sides to my tilt deck car hauler and unload with the loader.

 

[ron45]

This is just my opinion but were you planning on pushing the trailer you make backwards with the bucket on the Front end loader.. I am thinking that is going to suck . Or where you thinking of towing it from the drawbar then unhitching it and dumping it with the Loader bucket. I am a little unclear of your plan.

James K0UA

At this point never having tried it, that's how I plan to do it. Drabar, unhitch, turn around, raise, seems kind of involved. I don't have trouble backing up a 2 wheel trailer backwards. Seems it might not be too much hard going front wards. But again this is uniformed conjecture. I appreciate your input James

 

[ron45]

I have a trailer made from an old 3/4 ton Ford. I cut the frame and formed a tongue without modifying the box/frame. It will not dump with my loader without a lot of trouble. I have to get it centred perfectly and then lift until the trailer is standing on it's bumper to get gravel to come out and then move it a little and do it again. It just isn't worth the effort. Making the trailer with a shorter rear overhang is necessary and then a small loader might not lift it. I'm planning to add sides to my tilt deck car hauler and unload with the loader.

I planed to raise the bed high enough above the axle to get a good tilt. But I sure do appreciate the heads up. I could also place the bed more in the direction of the tongue to help with that.

 

[k0ua]

At this point never having tried it, that's how I plan to do it. Drabar, unhitch, turn around, raise, seems kind of involved. I don't have trouble backing up a 2 wheel trailer backwards. Seems it might not be too much hard going front wards. But again this is uniformed conjecture. I appreciate your input James

Well maybe you have flat ground and can keep control of the trailer, by pushing it with the FEL. I could never do that here. Just too many hills and rough ground

James K0UA

 

[Ozykioti]

Re; Hitch configuration.
Have you heard of a "treg" hitch? It's used here in Oz for off road towing. It looks like a universal joint and would do what you need for lifting the trailer. I need to make some kind of dump trailer soon myself.

 

[Bird]

I have a trailer made from an old 3/4 ton Ford. I cut the frame and formed a tongue without modifying the box/frame. It will not dump with my loader without a lot of trouble. I have to get it centred perfectly and then lift until the trailer is standing on it's bumper to get gravel to come out and then move it a little and do it again. It just isn't worth the effort. Making the trailer with a shorter rear overhang is necessary and then a small loader might not lift it. I'm planning to add sides to my tilt deck car hauler and unload with the loader.

I didn't have a pickup bed trailer, but just an ordinary 5' x 10' trailer and a 7' x 16' trailer, and raising the tongue high enough with my FEL to try to dump the contents of a trailer just never did work well enough for me to try it more than a couple of times.

 

[ron45]

More unproven conjecture here, I'm thinking that if I lift the bed high enough off the axle, and move the center of the bed towards the tongue I can get enough room to dump it properly. The metal bed should help there too. But it I have to use a shovel some to get it out of there it still beats running back and forth as far as fuel usage and wear and tear on kioti.

 

[ron45]

Re; Hitch configuration.
Have you heard of a "treg" hitch? It's used here in Oz for off road towing. It looks like a universal joint and would do what you need for lifting the trailer. I need to make some kind of dump trailer soon myself.

That's pretty good news Ozy. I was thinking of something with a heavy chain if the ball didn't afford enough range of motion but I will look into your suggestion. The chain wouldn't be much good for the steering part. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[Jesse masterson]

Why not weld a hydraulic cylinder and run off remotes? I know you got it in ya Ron!

 

[ron45]

Why not weld a hydraulic cylinder and run off remotes? I know you got it in ya Ron!

Hey Jesse, my thinking was use the hydraulics I already have. Tho I admit I don't know the cost of a cylinder to do the job. I also don't know where remotes are on kioti. I imagine they might be near all the backhoe hookups . But doing that implies a lot more work than just welding some tabs to bolt a cylinder to. The bed would need hinges and a frame to raise up from and rest on. Just conjecture off the top of my head again. I'm not much of a fabricator. I'd be doing well just to get the pickup bed and some suspension attached to the axle and some sort of tongue in place. Once I have the stuff in one place on the ground maybe I can figure out what to do with it. Keep yer powder dry.

 

[Jesse masterson]

Easy is always good! Lol

 

[blucoondawg]

If I were to make that sort of trailer, I wouldn't mess with the suspension, just make it solid to the axle. It would bounce but if you are lookin for offroad use on your property it wouldn't be an issue, even on the road it wouldn't be bad as long as u didn't go highway speeds, as for the hitch you may also consider a pintle hitch rather than a regular ball hitch. The dump trailers we have at work run off of a battery, not the hydraulics of the tractor that way they can be used on a truck or whatever you want to pull them with that may not have hydraulics. That's my .02.

 

[ron45]

If I were to make that sort of trailer, I wouldn't mess with the suspension, just make it solid to the axle. It would bounce but if you are lookin for offroad use on your property it wouldn't be an issue, even on the road it wouldn't be bad as long as u didn't go highway speeds, as for the hitch you may also consider a pintle hitch rather than a regular ball hitch. The dump trailers we have at work run off of a battery, not the hydraulics of the tractor that way they can be used on a truck or whatever you want to pull them with that may not have hydraulics. That's my .02.

Thanks `dawg, the only reason I'm thinking of suspension is to gain ground clearance for dumping. I will checkout pintle hitches too.

 

[ron45]

I checked out pintle and Treg hitches. The pintle looks much more robust, the five ton version is over kill. But it's much cheaper then the treg hitch prices I saw. However, I think I was on an Aussie site. The Treg is a pretty good design for allowing vertical raising of the tongue. I pretty sure it would be strong enough. Either one will make it easier raise the tongue. The big unknown is how much of a pain it will be to push the trailer and guide it. I can always un hook and turn around to dump if I have to.

Suppose I mounted the tractor's hitch thru a whole in the b h bucket. Are the lateral forces that could come into play at low off road speeds that would preclude using the backhoe to tow with. I'd like to thank everyone for the generous help. I'm beginning to think with this quality of help we can get it done.

 

[Ozykioti]

Hi Ron, just thinking about your hitch some more. For a cheap hitch you could use the universal joint from a small truck, it would do all the treg would do but for a lot less money if you can get one used from a wrecker(breaker I think is the us term?) there would be a little fab to set it up but nothing to major. Good luck.

 

[ron45]

Ozy thanks, Thats a good idea. Should be plenty of those around.

 

[blucoondawg]

You wouldn't need suspension to get height out of your box, just block it up off your axle with a steel frame to the desired height. As for the hitch I wouldn't put any holes in your bucket, I would weld a piece of steel across the top of the bucket to strengthen it up then weld or bolt the hitch to the top center of the bucket, bolt it somehow if you want to be able to take it off for general bucket use. Another option would be to fab up a mount for your hitch which would quick couple onto the loader in place of the bucket but then you would probably want to change it out to use the bucket to level your dirt and it would be more messin around welding. At work we have pintles on backhoe buckets and move trailers around that way all the time, they push backwards rather easily as you are moving slowly enough, the only problem you may have is if u make to trailer too short it may like to jackknife but at the speeds u will be moving I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[swick1]

I've thought about this a lot and concluded that I would want to have electric brakes on the trailer with a switch or brake controller on the tractor to lock them up in the rough terrain of west virginia.

I would put a receiver on the bucket and one on the rear blade to allow flexibility in towing options.

I would spend the money to make it dump hydraulically and I would put big tires on it to keep it easy to tow. A regular trailer tire and wheel set will sink like a rock and at any rate have a lot of rolling resistance, limiting payload severely.