California Trucks

[Jim B]

So a couple of weeks ago I was in San Diego, CA, for vacation; and I was looking at the trucks on the roads. The trucks in California are very different from the ones we have here in New York (well, a lot of things are different about California, but that's another story ). One of the setups that caught my attention were single drive axle tractors pulling tandem single axle belly-dump trailers. I'm not sure about the rest of the country, but I'm pretty sure that wouldn't fly here in New York. Especially driving them down city streets!

Now, about these set-ups. Are both of the trailers 28ft semi-trailers with a dolly under the second trailer; or is it one semi-trailer and the second one is a full trailer (no dolly & two axles). It's more of an academic question as scratch building something like that is way out of my league.

Thanks.

[Petetrucker07]

Here in cali, those bottom dumps, or dummy dumps as i call them, are very very common. They basically 25 to 28 ft long with a con gear for the b trailer. They are used and beaten to death like the super 10s and bobtail trucks on the esst coast. We can only haul 2 28ft trailers in cali on road. Off road, meaning jobsites, ive seen 2 40ft trailers, tandem axle both trailers and con gear, again bottom dumps. I drive a transfer now, which from what im told arent seen on the east coast. Its a dual drive truck with a dump box, and a trailer with a box thats on rails to transfer into the truck box. We can only carry 80000 lbs on a 5 axle unit. I heard you guys out east can get %age over permits off highways.

The bottom dumps are mostly the setup you saw, but there are some dual drive trucks with 40ft trailers, not real common at all though. If you want info i can provide some more.

Hope that answers your ?.

[Jim B]

Yup! That works. Thanks, Clayton.

[Thatswhatshesaid]

You also see the single drive trucks with double 28ft flats for hauling hay or tomato tubs.

Did you see any of the 57' trailers with the cabovers daycabs? Those are interesting. Especially with the 41 foot bridge laws.

[Jim B]

We were mostly in the downtown San Diego area, and didn't venture too far from the city. We tended to hit the touristy areas (The Zoo, Old Town, SeaWorld). I didn't see any of the 57ft trailers with COEs, though I would have liked to.

[Petetrucker07]

Look up Diksen, CW Mathews and Joie. Dirksen/Gardner are the big company and probably the 1s seen most out here. My Dad learned how to drive at an old company here called MF Davalos, they are long gone. Then, they mainly hauled empty plastic bottles from thd factory that made them, to bottlers like Pepsi, Coke, RC/7up, Shasta and every once in awhile, now heres 1 to remind you how old we are, empty GLASS bottles to Gatorade. The trailers were equipped with a roller bed, 4 wide, about 10" wide each, that went the length of the trailer. The trailers have a kingpin set way back, just guessin about 48" from the nose, and tandems are set way forward, about a 12 ft over hang. The day cab and the odd kingpin and tandem locations get them legal. The bridge and overall length are legal thats how the trailers are able to be used.

Edited September 1, 2014 by Petetrucker07

[Jim B]

Glass Gatorade bottles. Yep, we're old!

I'll look up those companies. Maybe there are some pics on the Web. I think a set of tandems like I saw in San Diego would look cool behind the Peterbilt 288 I have planned. We'll see how that goes! There are some decent pictures in "Big Rigs in Action" by Robert Genat. Most of the trucks he photographed are in California. Southern California by the looks of the photos. The one thing that irks me about the book is that he only manages to spell "Peterbilt" correctly TWICE in the entire book!

[Force]

I have seen those single drive two axle tractors with dual 27-28 feet bottom dump trailers all around the L.A. area the six times I have been there so far and I have allways wondered what they were used for.

One day a couple of years ago I saw a lot of them dumping asphalt on a road in Stanton and an asphalt paver came after gathering up and spreading the asphalt string out...but there may be other uses for this combinations too...I don't know.

[Petetrucker07]

Many, the asphalt is a big 1, they also on the same job sometimes drive next to the grinder loading the old road surface thats being ground up, take that to the asphalt recycler which out here is usually the asphalt plant. The bottom dump set up is also used to bring rock and sand to concrete batch plants, brick manufactures, plants that make premix concrete bags for Lowes type places and raw materials to the cement plant to make the powder cement. The bottom dump is very versatile out here. The transfer dump truck is used the same way except when paving, the paver pushes the truck along, the bottom dumps dump in the middle of the lane being paved and a scraper style machine with a conveyor load it into the paver.

Edited September 1, 2014 by Petetrucker07

[Aaronw]

Jim, if you decide to give a set of bottom dumps a go, I've got some photos of a trailer around here somewhere.

My brother does a lot of highway work pulling a set bottom dump doubles so when I found one of these trailers parked convieniantly I took some photos with the idea of "someday" building a set.