My wife and I loaned our trailer to some friends that lost their house in the wildfires here in Texas. Now their property is cleared off they want to move the trailer onto the slab of their old house. The guy is building a barn on the old slab of the house and I am going to back the trailer into that slab. He only wants to make the ramp 10 to 12 ft long and I think that is way to short. I did a quick calculation and the grade of what he is planning on building is 16 to 20 percent. Is this way to steep?
Backing 3210 onto a pad that is 20" above the ground!
- Thread starter landp
- Start date
Sandpirate69
Well-known member
Im not an engineer. But I would guess that if he's going 20' up then he would need at least 30', if not 40' of ramp to get up there. That's so that your rig doesn't get damaged. Remember, you only have a certain amount of angle on the hitch ball, before it starts to try to come off.
Good luck on your adventure.
Ivan
Good luck on your adventure.
Ivan
Ray LeTourneau
Senior Member - Past Moderator
It for sure sounds too steep. No engineer here either. You should measure the distance from the tires to the rear bumper and the height of the rear and go from there. I'd guess Sandpirate is pretty close at 30ft. Probably 3X the distance from the rear tire to the bumper.
I am getting these measurements tomorrow. I was thinking somewhere in the area of 40' for a ramp.
Lance & Jo
Well-known member
Interesting problem and one I hadn't thought about before, ie how step an incline could I really back up. So grabbed a flashlight and went outside to measure. On our rig the lowest point is the rear stablizer and it's about 20 inches off the ground and is 10 feet behind the rear axel (it was dark and the stablizers were on the ground but think I'm fairly close here). So bottom line for us is it looks like a slope that rises 2 inches a foot would bounce the bottom but on the other hand a slope of 1 1/2 inches per foot would give clearance. So to get my rig on your slab I think I would need at least 14 foot of ramp and add a couple feet for my poor braking habits which cause the trailer to bounce a little.
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