Heavy haul trailers are designed to carry massive loads safely on and off road. One of the key components to ensuring your heavy haul trailer works properly is regular maintenance. Performing regular maintenance and inspections on your heavy haul trailer is essential to keep your trailer working as long as possible. Here are our heavy haul trailer maintenance essentials.
Heavy Haul Trailers
What are Heavy Haul Trailers Used for?
Heavy Haul trailers are typically used for industrial and commercial purposes. These trailers are used to transport heavy equipment, specialized ,and machinery in situations where multi axle configurations are required to spread the ground pressure out. Heavy Haul trailers are designed to carry extreme loads while ensuring the longevity of bridges, roads and other paths in which the trailers must travel.
What are the Different Types of Heavy Haul Trailers?
There are many different types of halt trailers as trailers need to be designed for different purposes. Heavy haul trailers come in all shapes and sizes based on the required load to transport as well as allowable axle group configuration loads.
Accusteel’s LBS series is our standard lowboy on air suspension. This configuration can range from an 8 axle all the way to a 13 axle. Another type of heavy haul trailer is the Accusteel LBW series, also commonly referred to as a “wheeler”. These suspensions can be air or mechanical and provide 16- or 24-wheel trailer configurations for larger loads. Both types of trailer can be coupled with Jeeps and Boosters of your choosing to achieve the desired loading capacity.
Heavy Haul trailers also can be customized to fit certain needs, rather than requiring the heavy haul trailers to be manufactured as a specific type. These trailers can be specialized with the use of steering dollies, hydraulic suspensions, specialized schnable goosenecks and more.
What Sets Heavy Haul Trailers Apart?
Heavy haul trailers are different from standard highway trailers because they can be specially configured to add and remove axle groups as needed. With the use of load dividers, such as Jeeps and Boosters, greater loads can be packed while maintaining legal axle grouping reaction forces. Furthermore, with the use of rail sections, deck sections, and other custom spacers, trailers can be lengthened or shortened to fit special loads or simply transfer weight forward or backward as needed. As loads become more specialized, the customization of trailer sections becomes more and more customized and provides users with the flexibility to create solutions like “Lego” with their own trailer fleet. Heavy haul trailers are different from any other trailer as they can be uniquely configured to carry extreme loads safely on highways and over bridges.
Essential Maintenance for Heavy Haul Trailers
Preventative Maintenance Plans
When maintaining your heavy haul trailer, it’s recommended to put a preventative maintenance plan in place to routinely check the air system, electrical system, hydraulic system and all running gear components.
Structural Maintenance
Be sure to check all frame members, specifically in high stress areas, for fatigue, cracking, and other signs of yielding materials. It’s essential to perform visual as well as NDT inspection of pin joints, transition areas, and coupling joints at service intervals.
Trailer Lubrication
Trailers with moving parts need to be properly greased. This prevents rust as well as material break down and fatigue. Grease all points requiring lubrication such as brake components, pivot pins, dolly legs, fifth wheels and auxiliary rollers or attachments.
How Often Should a Trailer Receive Maintenance?
At Accusteel we highly recommend monthly or bimonthly preventative maintenance to ensure your trailers are in the best condition. It’s also important to do a pre-trip inspection with a comprehensive checklist before every load. From a legal standpoint, commercial vehicle inspections are mandatory once a year, and any maintenance needed from the inspection must be completed before the trailer is used again.
Why is heavy haul trailer maintenance important?
Heavy haul trailers require regular maintenance due to the high loads and rough conditions in which heavy haul trailers operate. The standard, annual inspection is not typically enough to catch component wear and possible signs of failure. It is important to inspect units often and flag potential problems before they turn into a failure. Many elements of preventative maintenance can be done by anyone who is capable of using a grease gun and checking basic operation of the trailers.
When it comes to more detailed inspections, professionals should perform the periodic maintenance checks to ensure all frame and mechanical components are wearing as designed and no signs of sudden failure are present. For insurance and safety purposes, annual CVIP inspections must be done by a licensed and qualified inspection facility to legally be allowed on the road.
Accusteel Maintenance
Why Choose Service and Maintenance with Accusteel?
Accusteel’s service and inspection program offers a comprehensive look at every aspect of heavy haul trailers’ conditions and operation. Many shops are capable and qualified to check lights, change brakes and ensure the components are in working order, but Accusteel goes the extra mile to inspect the frame condition from an engineered perspective.
Understanding how stress flows through the system, Accusteel’s team of technicians and engineers can spot premature or potential failures before they happen. Leaning frames, stretched pin joints, collapsing bearing plates, or perpetual cracking provide evidence of yielded metals. Some of the causes for this yielded metal and damage can have a wide range. Whether the trailer was under designed or overloaded, or there was an accident or simply fatigue can all contribute to undesired damages. The main advantage to Accusteel’s program is that a solution will be proposed to stop the problem in its tracks. Accusteel does not patch a problem and instead creates a solution. In turn, the reduced risk and liability allows you to sleep at night knowing your heavy haul trailer is not an accident waiting to happen. Accusteel is CWB certified to 47.1 as well as permitted by APEGA to practice engineering. Together with the custom fabrication portfolio, frame inspections and repairs can be made with full confidence.
Accusteel offers various options for maintenance and inspections. Accusteel has many options to suit your heavy haul trailers needs, from basic PM services and HPU services to structural and advanced structural inspection. We also offer our comprehensive annual CVIP in which the entire system is checked. Once inspections are complete, a link will be emailed to you to access your company’s personal online Accusteel portal. Here you can access detailed estimates including pictures and videos of the damages found on the trailer as well as a proposed solution.
Whatever your heavy haul trailer needs, Accusteel has you covered! Our expert team of engineers and technicians will ensure that your heavy haul transportation requirements are met and exceeded, every step of the way. Contact us about our maintenance and inspection services!
