I sure hope I don't have $950 in the trailer when I am done.
The reason... I already have all the materials, collected from various places over the years. I am a packrat kind of guy and tend to find used or drops of steel and save them till I need them.
Current project, building a set of adapters to allow me to run dual rear wheels on my JD 2555. So far, money out of pocket, none, and they are almost done. I still have to cut some flatbar to add to the center, because I didn't have a piece with a thick enough wall for the center pipe.
For the trailer I plan on using 5" channel, picked up from a local business to build the part of the deck that raises. Since I am planning on only dumping the last 13' of bed, and the rest of the 20' will be stationary, I will have to use it all the way to keep the deck at one height.
I have 3 pieces of 1/4" aluminum that are 13'x3' that will cover the dumping part of the bed, and some of the stationary part, to make it a little lighter. I haven't checked to see if I have enough other stuff to finish the deck off in aluminum, but hopefully I have enough of it, as I really want it to be reasonably light.
The 5" channel was a bonus when I purchased the roller bed from a 53' trailer they were stripping out. The guy put all of it in the scrap bin, and rather than trying to separate it out, I just bought the whole bin's contents.
If I ever post any pictures of my projects, you should notice that all of them carry the same rust color due to me using stuff I have sitting around. Too cheap to pay todays steel prices, but one day I am going to run out of my stash, and then I will be in trouble!
David from jax