Hello, my name is Brian and I live in Syndey, Australia with my wife and our four kids. I have a busy day job working in an office, so at the weekends, I like to get away from it all. Last year, I took my wife and kids out for a drive into the Outback. I am a pretty experienced driver, but I still managed to get the wheels of our car stuck in some deep mud. The sun was getting low in the sky and I started to panic. Thankfully, I managed to contact the local tow truck company who sent a man out to rescue us. He even towed my car to the nearest garage and gave me some top tips about how to tow vehicles. I hope you enjoy my blog.
If you own a piece of construction machinery (such as a skid steer loader or a backhoe loader, for example) that you need to have towed, you should follow the advice described below when you get in touch with the towing company that will be providing you with this service.
Ask for a tipper trailer if the area where the equipment needs to be unloaded is enclosed and small
When people use a towing service to transport their construction equipment, they will often opt for a flatbed trailer, the base of which is usually a few feet above the ground. Because of the relatively large distance between this trailer's base and the ground, any towing company employees who use it will normally need to place a pair of long ramps at the edge of the trailer when loading equipment onto or off of it. The use of these ramps is particularly important when these people are unloading the equipment, as the ramps enable them to slowly guide the equipment down a gentle slope rather than dropping it forcefully onto the ground from a height, which could cause some damage.
However, if the parking spot where your construction equipment needs to be dropped off is very small and enclosed, then there might not be enough room in which to place these type of long ramps when unloading the equipment off the trailer. In this situation, a tipper trailer would be a better option than a flatbed. Tipper trailers are designed in a way that allows them to be elevated at an angle so that the equipment on top of them can be gently 'tipped' off the trailer and onto the ground. As such, if you order a tipper trailer from the towing company, there will be no need to use space-consuming ramps when taking your equipment off the trailer. This, in turn, will mean that the space constraints of the area where you need to drop off your equipment will not cause problems when you unload it.
Place the equipment in a compact position before measuring it
The towing company you get in touch with will ask you to provide your equipment's exact dimensions so that they know what size trailer they will need to use to tow it. To ensure that the information you give them is accurate, you will need to measure your equipment. Before you do this, you should put it in a compact position. For example, if you plan to have a backhoe loader towed, you should make sure that both of the 'arms' are curled inward, close to the main part of the equipment before you measure it.
The reason for this is that if you measure this equipment whilst its arms are extended, the 'length' measurement that you calculate will be much longer than if these arms were curled inward. If you were to then give these measurements to the towing company, they would pick a trailer than is much longer (and significantly more costly) than you really need. As such, if you don't want to overspend, it's important to check that the equipment is configured into a compact position before you measure it.
Share10 September 2019
