A truck and trailer hookup can be a great purchase or rental decision that can help your business logistics, or in some cases help you with personal moves. Whether or not you should purchase or rent a truck or trailer depends on your budget and how long you’ll expect to use it. But you can do so much with a trailer even beyond just towing cargo long distances. Here’s a few different kinds of trailers you may want to look into renting.
Using A Dry Van Trailer
A dry van trailer is usually the standard trailer used for hauling regular freight through a trucking fleet. These are long trailers that have a single door or double doors on the back and sometimes have a liftgate if you need to load pallets or other large cargo from the ground level. Otherwise, these trailers are ideal for bringing up to a loading dock and allowing freight workers to load them that way.
Using A Moving Floor
A moving floor trailer is basically like a dry van, but the advantage of this trailer is that the floor can be moved when the cargo needs to be loaded without using man power. For example, if you’re going to be transporting construction equipment, large packs of agricultural products, or other shipments that need extra assistance, moving floor trailers get the job done.
Moving floor trailers do tend to be more expensive than dry vans, but they come in handy when a forklift isn’t available or can’t get the moving done.
Using A Hopper Bottom
If you’re working with seeds, grains or other goods that have to be loaded directly into the truck from machinery, a hopper bottom trailer is probably what you want. This trailer is especially handy for agricultural use and for quickly unloading in storage silos.
When you use a hopper bottom, you may need to follow certain procedures to make sure that tarp covers aren’t blown off or grain chutes open at the wrong time. But so long as you follow the operating manual closely, a hopper bottom should be able to transport grain efficiently.
Using An Oil Tanker Trailer
Transporting oil, gas, or liquid natural gas can be a very dangerous and costly task. So renting or buying an oil tanker trailer that’s been inspected and meets all safety specifications is important if you’re involved in transporting it. You’ll want to consider how large a load of oil you’ll be taking, how long of distance it will be traveling, and what kinds of road conditions may pose travel risks.
Using A Dumpster Trailer
If you deal with a lot of waste that takes more than a regular Dumpster to haul off, you may want to buy or rent a dump trailer for managing it. Some dump trailer rental services have delivery and disposal services handled by their specialists so that you don’t have to haul them off yourself.
A dump trailer can be very handy for hauling off large amounts of scrap metal and industrial waste that can’t be hauled off in other trailers.
Using A Residential Or Commercial Moving Trailer
Usually when residential moves are done, moving trucks and trailers are rented since they’re only needed temporarily. Commercial moving or other logistics may happen more often with business owners, so it may pay to buy a trailer in those cases.
Renting or buying a trailer for a move also usually means choosing a size that allows for excess cargo so that you aren’t paying for more than one truck.
Using A Detached Trailer For Storage
Sometimes a trailer can be best used as an extra storage container such as attaching to a building or used as a separate unit. Sometimes it can be used as a pod for a move that will be picked up and transferred to your new location. You may need to check your zoning laws and rules before using a trailer for storage in a residential lot, but buying one for that purpose can give you a great return on investment over the long haul.
The bottom line is heavy duty trucks and trailers are all built differently and have different loading and weight capacities. A reputable truck and trailer dealer can help you figure out which kind would be the most cost effective while also lasting for years.
Video – Logistics
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Interesting related article: “What does Logistics mean?“