It’s been a minute since we talked about a trailer this cool, but, man, is this one worth the wait. It’s like the Swiss Army Knife of custom trailers. Hard-working. Multi-talented. Sophisticated. Easy on the eyes. A true pro. It’s even got forklift attachments.
The story of our accomplished custom cart started when a navy yard simply needed a better way to handle steel plates. The customer had been using a big movable hoist to pick up the plates, which were stored on racks in their parking lot. It was cumbersome and inefficient, requiring a lot of manual handling and lifting with the risk of injury.
Enough was enough. They called on Hamilton custom engineering to heal them of their pinched fingers and lost productivity. We created a complete system designed to transport the plates from their storage racks all the way to their production machines with minimal human handling. Here’s how.
The customer is now using its own fork truck and a Hamilton-provided forklift beam and spreader bar to raise the plates and place them onto our custom cart. Using our specially-designed plate clamps, the fork truck operator can grab and lift the plates with ease, rotate them 90 degrees, and then lay them flat onto the cart. A retractable tagline lets the operator control the position of the plate at a safe distance.
Then, after the cart is manually pushed to nearby production machines, a worker can use the cart’s foot pump to engage the hydraulics on the bottom of the cart and raise up multiple rollers until the plates are sitting flush atop the wheels—making it much easier for workers to push and feed the plates onto the production machines.
Due to the constraints of the forklift’s maximum lift, the plate size and the desired deck height when in a horizontal position, Hamilton had to develop a special forklift attachment with a low headroom dimension. This limited us to just a couple inches of clearance to make the whole system work.
But that’s what we do. Solve problems, eliminate hazards and get your precious cargo moving from point A to B in the most efficient and safe way we know how. Sometimes that means just a custom cart. Sometimes it means an entire system. Either way, we’re here for your thorniest design challenges.
Steel Plate Trailer
- Capacity: 2,850 lbs., with a 4x safety factor based on yield strength of materials
- Deck Size: 52” x 108”
- Deck Height: 39 5/8”
- Deck Material: Open frame with retractable hydraulically actuated rollers
- Steering Type: Platform Dolly (4) S-ZFFM-10-4SL
- Superstructure: Plate tilting components consisting of UHMW lined back rest and urethane coated pivot wheels
- Color: Safety Yellow
