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Concrete Trailer Purchasing Tips:
Make Money with Capacity… Your mixing trailer
capacity is based upon the difference between the weight of the
empty trailer
and weight of the wet concrete in the drum. Law enforcement
agencies will fine you for overweight loads. If your empty trailer
is heavy, you lose carrying capacity and therefore lose payload
capacity. Heavy frames or extra tanks for water all
diminish capacity. It is simple
math, but some trailer manufactures don’t care if you make money
with capacity..
Save Money on Repairs… All equipment will need some
maintenance and repair, but you want a trailer that will eliminate
most of the expensive hassles of long term operation. The most
expensive moving part on your trailer is the
gearbox. This box receives the most stress when the drum is
asked to change directions. Trailers that
use drum rotation controls that reduce this stress will save you
very costly repairs.
Save Time from Hassles… A quick tour of most
trailer-based concrete operations will quickly illustrate a nagging
problem; Bent fenders.
Steel fenders bend into the tire and rub. This requires pounding the
steel back into something close to the original shape. Who needs the
hassle and the waste of time and money?
Demand Parts Support… Just because someone can
build a trailer doesn’t mean that you will have the parts support
that you require. Demand that your supplier
stock parts on the shelf for maintaining and supporting your
equipment.
Seek Experts… Equipment sales people and metal
fabricators are not experts in making money using concrete
trailers. Choose your
experts based upon a proven
history of
success making money with the equipment in the real world.
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Deposits… It is common to pay a deposit when
ordering construction equipment. You should find a solid
supplier who will ask for reasonable deposits. Anything near 50%
is a
sign that you might be helping to fund something other than
your equipment. |
Two styles of concrete trailers:
The old style concrete tub trailer was first built in the 60’s
starting with U-Cart in Vancouver, Washington. The idea was to
mix concrete and pour it into a ‘bath-tub’ on wheels so that the
material could be towed to a jobsite. The problems with these
trailers are many. The material settles in transit. That means
that what was concrete when poured into the trailer becomes a
settled mess of sand and gravel on the bottom, water in middle
and cement floating on top. If you plan on taking the concrete
more than about 3 miles, you should plan on remixing the
materials before pouring. The one advantage of the tub-type
trailer is that it is cheap. In fact, good used trailers
typically bring less than $1000 on the market today. We know of
no manufacturer who still has a regular production of a tub
trailer.
The new style,
concrete mixing trailer, pioneered by Cart-Away™ in the late
80s has all but taken the market from the old style trailers.
 Since the
rotating drum trailers replicate what happens at a typical
ready mix operation (material is batched into a revolving drum
transit mixer), they have all the advantages associated with
ready mix. Chemicals and fiber can be added to the mix. Concrete
can be delivered up to 60 miles from where it was batched. The
concrete is completely mixed and requires no remixing at the
jobsite. In short, with the new style revolving drum trailers,
you get true ‘ready mix.’ In the past, using old style tub
trailers, the quality of concrete was such that the market was
limited mostly to do-it-yourselfers. Today’s new drum style
trailers mean that most of the business is contractors and
municipal users. The
latest study
of the concrete trailer industry indicates that over 60% of
today’s concrete trailer users are contactors due to the mixing
capabilities in a Cart-Away™ mixing trailer. |
    
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