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King removable neck - IMG 1807

A King removable neck unit in the hook-up position

King low loader deck - IMG 1808

King low loader deck - note lifting pins

King neck - up position IMG 1812

King neck in the lifted position for manoeuvring - lift bar visible below King sign

A Low Loader is (Lowboy - US English) a Semi-trailer that has two drops in deck height one drop right after the gooseneck and one drop in front of the rear axles. This allows the deck to be extremely low versus normal trailers. It offers the ability to carry legal loads up to 12' tall that other trailers could not.

History[]

The first low loader trailer was invented in the 1920s and featured a riveted gooseneck and solid rubber tires.[citation (source) needed] Early trailers had removable rear axles to allow loading in the UK. The first detachable gooseneck trailer was invented(patented) in 1958[1].

The low loader trailer comes in several variants, for a wide spectrum of tasks. Some of the variants are:

  • Fixed Gooseneck - which allow a longer deck length and lightest weight of all lowboys.
  • Technical Gooseneck - Second longest deck length and weight.
  • Hydraulic Detachable Gooseneck - Quickest and easiest to detach but, at the expense of weight and deck length.

Variants[]

  • Fixed Neck, Neck is fixed to trailers offering the lightest weight sacrificing the ability to detach and load over the front
  • Mechanically Detachable Gooseneck, While usually lighter than the Hydraulic Detachable Gooseneck users sacrifice ease of detaching and time to detach. Used for long speciality hauls.
  • Hydraulic Detachable Gooseneck, the most common and versatile of Lowboy trailers the Gooseneck is detached using Large hydraulic cylinders to raise and lower the trailer, and a small cylinder to shore the neck to the truck to remove the neck so a large piece of equipment can be driven over the front onto the deck of the trailer for transport.
  • Hydraulic folding Gooseneck, folds down to form the ramp.

Features[]

A few of the features Low Loader Trailers have are:

Suspension type
  • Spring ride suspension - Lowest cost while causing a rougher ride and more cycles to the steel of the trailer.
  • Air Ride suspensions have a very smooth ride increasing the life cycle of the trailer frame. Air Ride's can also be adjusted for a higher or lower deck height.
Main Structure Metal Type
  • Mill Rolled beams save money while being around 4-6,000lbs heavier, they also reverse camber after a few years.
  • T1 or A514 beams save weight and allow more versatile engineering of the trailer because they are cut to the highest strength shape possible and welded together.

References[]

External links[]

Smallwikipedialogo This page uses some content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Lowboy (trailer). The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Tractor & Construction Plant Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons by Attribution License and/or GNU Free Documentation License. Please check page history for when the original article was copied to Wikia


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