Has anyone made their dump truck into a dual purpose Dump-tractor? Something that the dump bed can easily be removed and a fifth wheel installed. I have some ideas floating around on how to do it, but looking to see what others have done too. Being a small operation and trying to stay cost effective this is one ave we are looking at doing.
All the adaptor kits to swing a bed onto a hoist frame left situated on a truck or to swap to a fifth wheel that for all intent and purpose Must be Physically Hard Bolted for the powers that be is difficult to excessively heavy for either purpose. Removing the side pins is also Not a task for the faint hearted, labor intensive. Need only inspect a Roll off truck to see the menagerie of machinery to use as a dump truck. A permanent mount is rigid to the truck, a floater bed the frame has to be as rigid as the truck. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/393.70
The later fifthwheel pins are easy to remove just two 1/2" bolts on out side remove those and pry the pins out, 10 minutes. Some years back a cement company I knew had three KW C500 dumps that were also used as tractors. They would remove the fifthwheel and slider stanchions {the slider stops were bolted to the slider}. The dump boxes were notched out and reinforced where the slider was bolted to the frame. So the slider frame stayed bolted to the frame all they did was remove the slider stops, pull the pins and remove fifthwheel put air to the slider lock cylinder and slide the stanchions out the back. I think they had it down to about 20 minutes to remove the fifthwheel. They had a two frames made up with winches and would back under unplug the lights, air gate lock hose, remove the box pins and cylinder top pin and drive out from under. Cylinder stayed on tractor.
about 40 years ago I saw a dump truck/ fifth wheel set up- non slider, stayed on frame, rails under box were modified to clear fifth wheel- (wider in fifth wheel area) . they raised box a bit, had 4 "A" frame things that attached to box, used a come a long to pull cylinder up a bit, disconnect hose- pull out
I was going to do this and bought a truck to do it with. Right now i have a IH truck with a winch and about 15 foot ginpoles that is not in very good shape then i have a f600 with a 16 foot flatbed dump i also had a 1ton. I haul scrap iron so i used the IH to load a trailer pulled buy the 1ton. I wanted to get one truck mount a winch on it and have a set of rails that had a hoist built were a bed could be winched up the rails and pined into place. The rails would need to be wider than the 5th wheel and a bed made with wide rails. I want to go from 3 rigs to one the only thing stopping me now is the truck i bought gets 3.5 mpg and the other trucks get better than 10 mpg.
Damn...that question brings back a lot of bad memories. Friend had an old Paystar 5000 with a dump, bought a lowbed and no way to haul it. Then he had bright idea #412.....make the dump "quick attach", oh ***k. Quick couplers on the dump cylinder (telescopic). Add an air hose for the impact wrench... Kinda went like this: lower box, relieve pressure, uncouple hoses, knock out lower pin, knock out pivot pins. Rig box with chains, lift with excavator, place on stupid friends trailer. Rig 5th wheel, set on truck, bolt down. Hook onto trailer, load excavator. Drive to next job, wash rinse repeat if the dump was needed. Ed
Look at 1:18 of this video. I’ve thought about rigging up a highway truck with something similar. Don’t know what the fifth wheel height would be. I’m in the same position. I currently swap bodies on an old International Loadstar. It’s time consuming, and it’s a pain.
It's quite uncommon. You need something to lift the dump box off though or a heavy frame to suspend the box so you can drive out from under it. I think the 5th wheel and hoist stays on and the dump box is a quick attach type deal. Plow trucks don't have a 5th wheel but often switch between a dump box and a sand spreader. Check out post 5 in the link below. It takes the hoist off but I think there are other systems that leave it on. I'm sure a truck dealer would know who makes the conversions. I have a former plow truck that has a frame around the hoist cylinder to hold it in place with the box removed. The frame can also be used to support the box incase repairs are needed to be done with the box up some. HeavyEquipmentForums
I suppose it could be a pain or time consuming but the ones that cement company had didn't take long to change out. They had a portable crusher and wash plant and would convert if needed to use moving the crusher.
I made a typo. I meant to say it's not uncommon and quite popular up here.
This looks like a pretty slick setup to accomplish what I am looking to do. Anyone ever used one? http://kybato.com/home.html
That's one version but they obviously didn't consider safety too much when making the video. Front end loaders are not cranes and don't have safety devices to stop them from crashing down.
I swapped mine back and forth for a year or so. Very similarly to the method Truck Shop described. I had use of a warehouse overhead crane and set the box on a cart when I wasn't using it and towed it outside. Sometimes doing it twice a week... burned me out on the task and I bought a tractor.
Six of one half dozen the other, using valuable labor time to swap bed to fifth wheel repeatedly or have two trucks paying bills on and using roughly less time each. Swap out driver stations or spend the time and coin to set it up for quick change,
What about building a dump bed that has its own subframe that pins in the fifth wheel and sits on the frame in the rear and pins or bolts up front
There must be a special name for the conversions but they aren't uncommon. If you have a stand to hold/lift the dump box doesn't take too long to change over. Would be annoying if you had to change it often though.