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Extreme practicality tow rig

zukgod1

zukgod1

Senior crawler
Location
Utah County
I had a 1 ton ford that had a flat bed I I used several times for hauling my crawler to Moab and back.

I've put allot of thought into picking up an old school bus and lopping off the back section for a flat bed and leaving just enough of the passenger compartment to haul a few buds as well.
I've seen a couple of these allong the way and there is a local auction yard that sells off the old buses once in a while.. Hmmm.


dan
 
spencurai

spencurai

Purple Burglar Alarm
Location
WVC,UT
skys extreme did this with fantastic results. I guess the walls and roof of the bus are extremely heavy duty so they offset most of the weight of the rig with the removed bus guts and parts.
 
BCGPER

BCGPER

Starting Another Thread
Location
Sunny Arizona
There's an easy way around all these issues. You're using the rig to recreate, right? Therefore, it's an RV. No CDL required, and insurance will probably be less than an every day driver. It's no different than all these guys using ton and a half or larger trucks to pull thier fifth wheels.

FWIW, my set up is 55 feet long, and weighs in around 30,000 pounds. No CDL required, and insurance is cheaper per year than my Jeep.


mbryson said:
I think Caleb hit it right on the head. Most ins. companies insure 1 ton and less vehicles on private insurance. If you've got a 1 ton truck, safely modified by a reputable company, I know you can get commercial insurance to carry the kind of payload that a vehicle would be, but I really don't know about the private party thing.

At the very least, I'd have your agent look at the vehicle before purchase and tell them what you planned to carry with it. You could carry 8,000 lbs of bricks on a flatbed and probably not have any real issues with the ins. company in the event of an accident. However, it it's a passenger vehicle and isn't bonded/insured, it gets kinda weird.
Click to expand...
 
mbryson

mbryson

.......a few dollars more
Supporting Member
Location
Bountiful, land of rocks
BCGPER said:
There's an easy way around all these issues. You're using the rig to recreate, right? Therefore, it's an RV. No CDL required, and insurance will probably be less than an every day driver. It's no different than all these guys using ton and a half or larger trucks to pull thier fifth wheels.

FWIW, my set up is 55 feet long, and weighs in around 30,000 pounds. No CDL required, and insurance is cheaper per year than my Jeep.
Click to expand...


Does it need to be 'self contained' to be an 'RV' or do I just need to call it that?
 
phatfoto

phatfoto

Giver of bad advice
Location
Tooele
I've seen old school buses used for hauling sand rails and antique tractors. Once the tractor or sand buggy are offloaded, some folks setup awnings and lawn furniture on the rear deck. Most use the larger 40 or more passenger buses, and lop off enough for the vehicle they carry. The rest of the interior is setup with folding bunks and such...
 
D

dunatic67

It's all about the HP
Location
Lehi
Supergper said:
I don't doubt the truck couldn't haul it on it's bed, especially if you have airbags, etc but I don't know about the legality of being loaded higher than the rated payload???
Click to expand...

I drove 1 ton flat beds for a company back in the early 90's. The trucks were registered for 12,000 Lbs originally (standard 1 ton right?). The trucks were then fitted with higher load range tires than they came from GM with and the registrations were updated with the DMV for 15,000 Lbs GVW.
I would cross ports all the time and get called in. UDOT would verify the registration and inspect the tires and let me go. As I recall the trucks weighed about 8,200 empty with stakesides.

So I would think you could do the same with a private vehicle.
 
Bart

Bart

Registered User
Location
Arm Utah
I think it's a great idea Cody. I was thinking of doing the same bed on my 4 door Superduty. Instead I bought a gooseneck that hauls 2 rigs.
 
Cody

Cody

Random Quote Generator
Supporting Member
Location
Gastown
I looked into the school buses but the ones I found all had some varient of an old Ford 5.9 diesel that was torquey but topped out at like 55-60 mph. Thats no good for me.

I may look into the RV registration thing when the time comes.
 
Devel

Devel

Just an Outlaw....
Location
North Salt Lake
m35.jpg


Just buy one of these, couldnt be to hard to put a Jeep in the back of one of these things
 
bobmed

bobmed

- - - -
Location
sugarliberty
I drove a flatbed tow truck at a company I worked for that used it to move around commercial laundry equipment. One person could load and unload 4000 lb. ironers, then it just took 5 more to get it in the building. We never had any problems with hauling because it wasn't for someone else so we weren't required to have any permits.
Heres one like what we used. Ours was about 8 years older.

2007 F650 SUPER CAB
CUMMINS 5.9L 230 HP/520 TRQ
ALLISON 2200 5-SPD AUTO

TOTAL MSRP$53,108

 
Last edited:
waynehartwig

waynehartwig

www.jeeperman.com
Location
Mead, WA
Sorry to resurect an old thread.....

...But what I've done in the past for hauling sand rails was make a trailer that is "T" shaped. The rear tires sit on the "T" part. The front tires are suspended in the air and not touching anything. This makes the trailer VERY light and with the rear engine sand rails I built, it had a really light tongue (all of the weight was over the axle). Basically it was all made of 2x4 steel with a 1.5" 'rail' above the straight part of the "T" for the sand rail to slide on while you drive up onto the trailer. It had expanded metal ramps and tires fit into a box and part of the tire sits below the trailer center. Make sense? It's hard to explain and I have no digital photos of the last one I did ~10 years or so ago....
 
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