Call it a brainstorm if you want. Looking for smart ways to get a hot rod and early ford truck up and down a loading dock. This is a standard loading dock. (roughly four feet tall?) Requirements: Should be a temporary/somewhat easily stowable setup. Needs to hold a full size truck. And I guess that's it. Of course I'm thinking on the cheap but I don't want either one of these vehicles dumped on thier side. Specific materials and construction methods are what I'm really interested in here.
I would call a flat bed tow truck. Drive your vehicle onto the flatbed and let the flatbed lower your vehicle to the ground. Very temporary and might only cost you a $30 or so loading fee.
I guess I'd think of a lowboy setup. It's a portable dock, made of wide planks of wood with two front legs that you can crank up and down....but in your case I'd go for something that I could remove or fold flat for storage. Ours holds tractors, backhoes and other various heavy equipment. It's cheap enough for the wood and a lil iron frame, something a little less obnoxious since you won't have the weight we do. Maybe I can find a picture.
Hmmm... think it actually needs to be more permanent than that... I think. My car will live there only temporarily, but pretty sure the truck will be a permanent resident. Coming and going with product and the space will be a part time garage. Edit: More permanent than the flatbed. I'd like to see pics of the setup you're talking about, Brandy.
When you say stowable, it sounds like you might be moving them on and off from time to time. I can envisoin an I beam setup. I'd need to know more details on how you would use it.
That's SORT of what we have at work. Except ours has two front legs on it and never actually attaches to anything. I'll take pics of it tomorrow at work and post them. It's a great setup, we can leave vehicles on it, it's wide enough but could easily be made to fit YOUR application AND when we actually bust a board, we just run to the Home Desperate and pick up a new board.
cut a hole in the other end of the bldng ie double doors and allighn hallways and such like a new car showroom use car skates for sharp corners... see ramp at dealers on 4wheeler lots a temp ramp is ??? still temp any metal ramps should be curved so no peak at dock edge weld on dolly wheels(to move indoors) and locating pins/holes in dock edge??? good luck papedog
Well I'm not 100% sure to be honest. I'm just the guy tossing my jalopy in the corner for a few months. The actual owner of the space I ***ume will be coming and going with the truck... mostly using the dock as a dock and parking on the street but occationally needing the space as a garage. So what's occational? I'll venture a guess at once a month. I'm picturing two seperate ramps - like what you see hooked to the back of a trailer for loading only bigger with added vertical support as needed. Just don't have it fully visualized.
Find a mobile home frame and use the I-beams from it. They're about 4 x 12. Two guys can lift a 20 foot piece... not that you need them that long. Put some jacks under the middle if it's a heavy vehicle... JOE
Looks like what was used by a lot of Race Teams in the past was Two sets of regular loading ramps with a couple of Saw Horse like supports where the two connect. Pics are from Auto Union and BRM.
stop by a used car lot and look at the ramps they use, they always have a car up in the air, you could get some ideas off of them.
This is what I thought of too. I'll measure the ones at my dealership today and maybe snap a few pics. I can probably find out where we got them and how much they cost too..........MIKE.
I misunderstood what you are trying to do. Our Mayflower driver has two long ramps that he can place together to use as one wide ramp or seperate to use to load a car. The ramps are aluminum and fibergl*** and arfe humped in the middle so the car can make the transition into the truck without high centering.
Kevin, the ramps at my dealer only go up to about 31". I'm still trying to get the "where to get from" info from the manager. Maybe they make them taller? If you PM me your email I can send some pics to show how they are made. I haven't figured out how to post pics here yet!! Yeah I'm not much of a computer guy. HAHA. It's all done out of 3/16 angle iron. They are pretty stong and the width is adjustable...MIKE.
how much room do you have? a long ramp may not leave you room to turn on to the ramp. how 'bout a backyard buddy 4-post lift? raise up, drive off. locked in the 'up' position seems like a good security method, too..
Just did a yahoo search for "car ramps". lots of ideas for you there, especially DISCOUNTRAMPS.COM. They show ramps going up loading docks as well as into semis. Maybe you can borrow a design.
We've moved some heavy equipment across open pits at work using I-beams on their side. It seems that the flanges would guide the wheels and keep you from driving off. If they bowed, you could always prop them up in the middle as suggested.
Could you post some photos and dimensions, including ground clearance? I'm thinking about I beam ramps but you might get high centered.
A friend of mine and neighbor has a two wheel trailer he built that with a ramp to get his cars in and out of his barn. Another guy right down the road has built a Ramp Truck to put his Hudson jets in the attic of his shop. Both of them just drive them up to where the car or truck need to go up or down and away they go.
This is a little off topic, but I noticed one of my neighbors who is a farmer, has a loading dock in his yard, by the barn. It is made of railroad ties, and built into a hill. I thought it was a very nice way of getting a functional ramp, without having to have all kinds of footings, etc. Anyways, I tried brainstorming, and the only idea I could come up with is a couple-three loads of gravel. Probably not too helpful, but it would get the job done, and could be cheap if you know the right people. Ben
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