Anyone use any of these trucks to haul around equipment. In Ontario it has gotten harder to get AZ/CDL license. But it’s still easy enough to get a DZ. have been thinking one of these trucks could be handy to get away from using trailers. I would like to be able to haul backhoes small dozers and 8 ton excavator. Nothing heavier than 20,000lbs. Thinking a tandem truck would be nice. My concern are deck hight. Length. Would need 24’ long. And ease of use. Any input or thought on this would be appreciated.
My company uses big rollbacks to carry skidsteers, CTLs, aerial lifts, mini excavators, attachments etc basically any thing that will fit on them and be within weight. Great for residential delivery too. And when not hauling equipment they can fetch oversize parts such as undercarriage and other stuff on pallets. they are high though and you’d have to ensure what you wanted to haul could cope with that high deck height.
Those hook lift trucks with a bed always looked handy to me.
Handy as a shirt pocket to have a hook lift I have looked at one for a long time Biggest set back is the weight they are heavy to set up as opposed to a beaver tail
Yes you lose payload, but also height on any high bed. I think the tradeoff is a good one especially if you fab up some job shacks and whatnot to sling around. Nothing is stopping you from pulling a pintle hitch trailer with it, either.
Love to have a tandem hooklift with a lift axle. Here in AL that would be legal up to 86K on state and local roads, no Interstate. Flatbed to haul small equipment, dump bed, water tank with sprayer, 20' conex job boxes, dumpsters for demo, etc. They are pricey new though. A tri-axle with 60K lift will be north of $225K before any bodies.
I have a rollback with a 20,000lb payload capacity. It's an '86 GMC I traded for from a customer who didn't have the money to pay me anyway. I don't use it to haul equipment as much as I thought I would due to the 48" deck height, since I have two road tractors, a variety of trailers, and a class A CDL, anyway. I do use it for everything else you can think of, and some you can't. You can do about anything with that winch and moving bed, and a pickup load of snatch blocks. I layed a 10'x10'x16' high hopper tank on it's side and loaded it out inside an abandoned warehouse with only an elevated loading dock for access, moved a bunch of loaded 40' containers around on a site, and stood a bunch of 25' tall cedar trees back up after a hurricane, on the other side of a canal!
I’ve been thinking of a rollback tow truck to move around my CTL and miniX since I had my truck towed a while back...seems real handy to have. What’s a decent truck under 26k? F650?
I've got a roll off that we use to haul skidsteers, attachments, bins, etc. It's on a 19,500gvw truck. As a result, its only got an 8k payload with the flat deck, but it works for us. I've looked at a tandem rolloff, but the problem I keep running in to is height. My Bobcat E85 is 13'6" on my low profile deckover float. The deck on my little Hino on 19.5" tires sits about a foot higher, and would put me over height. AR licenses are still easy in Ontario. I've sent a couple of our guys for them. Works great for hydraulic brake truck with unlimited weight trailer. No air brake though, and even if you get an air endorsement, still no trailer air brake unless you go for the full 6 week AZ course.
I think best med duty truck on the market is Hino. It seems every city around here has a city DOT cop for a revenue stream so 1-tons with trailers get scrutinized regularly. What some of the tree and landscape guys have started using are 450-550 and low profile med trucks to move their stump grinders, skids, minis, etc. I'm seeing rollbacks more and more.
I call them dirt cops around here. Always a pickup with canopy for hauling jump scales. The last time the county guy pulled me over was maybe 14 years ago. I had a heaping load of concrete chunks, which I had meticulously hand groomed for the 6" freeboard. He skeptically eyeballed the load and I handed him the last two load slips. It is about impossible to overload that little 8 yard box with all the air in that load, and those tickets were 1000+ underweight. He left his scales in the truck and I never talked to him again.
Hino announced they will not build any new trucks for the next year or so. They are shutting down their truck plant in West Virginia. The halt in production has to do with their engines not meeting EPA standards.
Damn that sucks. Nothing like the government to screw up a good product.
That's going to mess some things up. I'm sure the other manufacturers are going to make bank. Around here every other medium duty is a Hino.
Yes, and just a year or so back, Hino announced they were going to start building larger class trucks here in the U.S. In fact, they moved into a new, larger plant facility a few miles from their former plant. I have kind of kept up with their growth since the US> plant is right by my old home town. Jeff
I remember ready an article that Hino was going to produce tandem C&C's for vocation uses. Well now that's off the table.
That's a good looking rig NGC. What brand hoist do you have?
What about something like this. Bed height seems lower than the roll off and hook lifts. Just not sure how loading and unloading would work? Would you have to get out of the piece of equipment with the deck up to lower it down to transport position?
The 2 lowboy services we use have Landoll traveling axle trailers similar to that roll back. They have remotes to operate the trailer in addition to the controls on the trailer. I would assume roll back's have the same option.
Ontrux is who manufactured the hoist, and upfit the truck. Very well thought out system, and top quality workmanship. The hoist assembly is all galvanized which is part of what sold me on it. All of the hard lines are stainless One less thing to worry about rusting away. Its got a wireless remote, and a set full set of controls on the side of the truck. Biggest selling point to me besides the galvanizing was how much lighter it was than a hooklift. Saved a full 1000lbs over a palfinger hook, and it's not a deadlift system like a switch-n-go.
we have both a rollback tandem for our larger equipment, and a single axle hook lift, both are great for the job, we are a rental company so move bit of everything, the trucks are on the older side but the decks are great, height on both is the trade off but hasn't been a huge issue for our fleet yet
I ran a smaller rollback truck for a scrap yard for a few months. It had a hand held remote that would run all functions, except the wheel lift. It was great. If I got to a spot to pick up a vehicle that ran, I could drive it on and run the deck back to the locked and level position. This was on a 550 ford, it was a nice set up. Just wish I got paid.
A larger west coast contractor friend has a hook lift tandem and a half dozen or more flatbed skids for it along with the normal debri tubs, etc. His smaller paving crews each have one. His utility crews have a flatbed skid also. The hook driver drops the skid off with the small roller and paver or whatever else they need and goes on his way. They do the job, load everything up at 10" off the ground and tie it down ready to go again. He comes back, checks the tie downs and is on his way in no time. One truck services a number of crews and still the capability to haul debri on the demo jobs in between. He claims to have 1 truck doing what five used to do and mostly sat around at much expense.
I'd love to have a roll back, with a knuckle boom on it would be super sweet. Being able to drag up dead small equipment, parts, load on whole engines and trans. Carrying loads of material for jobs probably at times too.
United rentals uses trucks like this one you have in the photo. We have the drop and go, and it is a lot higher, and heavier. They bought it for the truck, and were going to put a dump box on it, but have kept it as is for now. The identical truck with a gravel box can scale around 16 tons of gravel. The drop and go with the automatic transmission, and the deck frame can only scale around 12 and a half. It came with a low sided dump box as well as the flat deck.
yes a 'nuck and slide would be handy. towing a 20 ton tandem axle trailer solves some of the weight problems. Unhook and park next to the trailer if needed to use knuckleboom to load it.
Here in British Columbia, CanadaI8I.I run a 2018 Frieghtliner..hook truck,with few different bin sizes,shapes and weights. With my smallest 20 yd bin,almost a flat deck, I can haul around 12 tons,With my larger 50yd bin,..just28⁷2²2²² 10 ton..Now legal height of 13.6"...can squeeze lil more with over height permint 14ft ..1 -15/16..Under 14'2"... Of.course certin roads, routes are acceptable. CVSE..- DOT...Are always gr8 to chat, & assist with questions, before they pull out a ticket book. Lowbeds, and different trailer options all have their place also. My favorite for fast ,moving, and tight restricted areas is the roll off hook.
The roll-off is handy for moving equipment, But your limited on the height. The excavator in the pic is right at 13'-6". Its probably only a 30 series machine.
Wow! Someone threw those in the garbage? lol United rentals moves a lot of gear with tandem roll offs, but they are more like a flat deck tow truck. A lot lower, and lighter
UR has tandem roll backs here which is a different animal than a roll off or hook lift. Actually Sunbelt, UR, Cat, Komatsu and all the equipment rental/dealers have them. Easier to get around the congested parts of the metro area.
Yeah we have a tandem with the hook and drop, the mechanism is quite high and heavy.