Welp after spending a week to move enough dirt to back fill a 8% grade space to park my "Mystery Ship" Rv rig on or some call it ("Rolling **** House" which I find amusing ) across 22 acres I think it times to add a dump truck to the fleet here to help move dirt faster. Need to build a house which will take bringing in rock, a 1320 plus ft driveway, gravel for a work shop or two and whatever else I have come up. They quoted me $25 a ton for gravel if they bring it out here which I doubt they are crazy enough to climb this treacherous ridge, which after all is said and done it's $400 a load to here versus $10 a ton for me to do it myself. So in that regards is it cheaper to buy a beat up dump truck? Now for the question in the headline, should I get a S/A or T/A since my max GVW allowed to have under farm tags or privately owned commercial vehicles without filing paperwork with IRS or whatever they said is 50k lbs. Nearest rock quarry is 50 miles up the road of all country rock dirt road and maybe 10 miles of pavement. My thought process is weight of truck and weight of load will hit 50k lbs way before a second axle would be needed.
T and A
If it's just for a personal build, I personally wouldn't bother owning unless I really liked fixing old broken junk. Around here, if it's that far away, I'm hiring a transport by the hour and getting 40 tons at a time. I can get an end dump for roughly $120/hr in monopoly money. If you're set on buying one, buy the tandem or biggest you can get. They consume about the same amount of fuel, so cost per ton goes down.
I tried hiring outside help and they took one look at the 3 miles of ridge getting up here and ran the other direction even after I told them I have two semis and hauled up to 50k lbs up here. As for fuel costs that's not a factor out here, just whatever it takes to get the job done is.
Excuse my memory, did not your tractor have a wet kit? Then a short end dump may be an idea worth exploring. One power unit to maintain. Cam
If he can't go over 50k, his payload *might be 10-12 ton. I suppose that's only a couple ton less than a tandem could haul.....
My C-6500 tares at 13,000# with a GVWR of 26K. I often run the 5 miles from my farm to quarry at 28-30K. I've never seen a single with a GVWR over 33,000#. And frankly, at an overloaded 35-36K they get wishy. If you are going to gross @ 50K, you need 10 wheels. Or at least a tag/lift axle. IMHO.
With that long a haul I would definitely have a tandem. what will happen if you try and push a single too hard as you'll have an inordinate amount of breakage. My little Ford's kind of hefty at 25000, you can find some tandems that are a bit lighter. That's 13 to 14 tons of product per trip. It amounts to about an extra half load of what you could get on a single axle under the best conditions.
Nope I ripped it off though I did keep the kit. I got so many projects making that into one would drag on longer than usual due to lack of garage.
We pay $20-27 a ton for washed rock delivered 10-20 miles from the quarry for reference. Do you have a place before the ridge line road where you could have it delivered there then cart it the rest of the way with a non-tagged cheap single axle dump? A 50 mile one way trip in an old tandem loaded will bring out all the weak spots in a truck. That $150-200 per load savings (not taking into account the cost of the truck, insurance, tags, fuel, maintenance, your time, etc) looks less desirable when the truck is broke down 1 mile outside the quarry with 49 miles to go. Just my $.02 worth every penny.
Nope as when you exit the main road you immediately hit a 36 to 38 percent slope going up and that's what they are afraid of. As for if the rig breaks down 1 mile outside the quarry I will just holler on the CB for the wife to come pick me up so I can get my other rig to tow it home One thing I love about being out here, everyone waves as you pass them here, you break down there usually is someone stopping to see if everything is okay and offer you a ride, human compassion exists here. I will take your $.02 into account on the savings you are talking about and break it down so others can see for better information on how things break down in price. Insurance is about $90 a month Tags $100 a year at max and you don't have to buy a years worth you can buy tonnage by the month Fuel $30 at worse a trip Maintenance TBD... Seems things might have changed see post #54 HeavyEquipmentForums Even if the guy doesn't sell it to me or we can't agree on certain price he told me I could take as much as I want and it would be doing him a favor in exchange. The dump truck would speed the process up of carrying it a mile up the road and won't have to put tags on it since I own part of the road, this is a private road here.
Single axle with an air tag. Got a couple of them running around here. One is a single axle international with I'm guessing a 13 foot bed with a single tire air tag. He can gross 15 tons of rock legally. Pulling that kind of grade loaded is going to need decent power and gearing.
I’d go with a tandem a tag would just get you hung up taking the weight from your drive in the types of areas I imagine you are in