H. Brown, Inc. serves the heavy-haul needs of Lafayette, Opelousas, Lake Charles, Alexandria, Baton Rouge, and beyond. We have cranes up to 450 tons, hydraulic Trailers up to 500 tons, lowboys up to 220 tons, gantries up to 900 tons and slide systems up to 600 tons.

Our fleet includes drop deck trailers, lowboys, flat bed trailers, Double Drop Trailers and stretch decks. You might be confused about the differences between removable gooseneck trailers, double-drop trailers, extendable trailers and multiple-axle trailers.

Let’s look at some of these fleet components.

Flat Bed Trailers

Flatbed trailers are widely used because they’re so versatile. You can load freight from the top, side-load it with a forklift and rear-load it from a dock. Standard height from the ground to the top of the trailer is 58 inches. Standard dock height in the U.S. is 48 inches, but a leveler can be used to make offloading possible.

The maximum legal load width is 8.5 feet (102 inches) and the maximum height limit is the same. Flatbeds typically carry up to 48,000 pounds. The standard length is 48 feet, though road restrictions in some areas (like California) keep them to 45 feet.

Cargo height tops out at 8.5 feet; anything more is over dimensional and will require permits. Over dimensional flatbed trailers can handle freight up to 160 feet long, 18 feet wide and 200,000 pounds (100 tons). Flatbeds that haul oversize loads typically have between 18 and 40 wheels.

Extendable flatbed trailers are also known as flatbed stretch trailers. They are designed for loads that are too long to haul on a standard flatbed trailer, but that need the support of the trailer for the full length of the freight. Stretch trailers are used for long freight (hence the term “stretch”). These include Double Drop Stretches, RGN Stretches, Flat Stretches and Step Stretches.

Step Deck Trailers /Single Drop Trailers

Stepdeck trailers are a version of the flatbed trailer design that mainly consists of a bottom and top deck. These trailers carry and haul freights that cannot be carried on a standard flatbed, usually due to height restrictions. The maximum legal weight for a Stepdeck is 48,000 pounds, length up to 53 feet, width of 8.5 feet and height of 10 feet. Stretch Single Drop Deck Trailer can haul freight up to 63 feet long.

Double Drop Trailers

H. Brown uses double drops for oversized freight. The lower deck height lets carry cargo over 10 feet tall. The middle of the trailer (the “well”) ranges from 25-29 feet. Because of the relatively short freight well length, there are also extendable double drop trailers for tall and long freight.

There are two types of double drop trailers:

• Fixed neck drop trailers are permanently attached to the well of the trailer
• Removable gooseneck (RGN) double drop trailers can be removed from the well of the trailer. The front (gooseneck) has a foldable front end that retracts down into a ramp. The truck pulls away from the trailer, leaving you with a ramp to drive your machinery up into the well (29 feet standard, though inserts can extend well length to make RGN Stretches.).

Extendable doubledrop trailers are used to carry and haul long loads that can’t be carried by a standard double drop trailer. Depending on the fright’s weight, this trailer can either have 2 or 3 axles and be up to 50 feet long. Stretch Double Drop Trailers, or Stretch RGNs,

Usually double drop trailers have two or more axles, and a “Flip axle”, which flips up to lay on the deck or flips down to create an extra axle for balancing weight. They can usually haul about 35,000 pounds, though the RGN trailers can add axles.

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