December Classic & Vintage Commercials has a letter mentioning Little Giant Low Loaders. The knock out rear axle low loader was once a very common sight, both the smaller ones on D20s and the big’uns on 14.00 or 16.00 x 20 tyres. Many pictures of these trailers show the thing almost bent like a banana under the weight.
There must be some stories from former low loader men about their struggles with these trailers,
Hello All. We had two low loader trailers at Ben Wyatt Plant- Hire from Snetterton. One was a home made King copy - Ben’s idea of a copy was to build it out of thicker steel and it came in at 18 tons and was pulled by a MkV AEC Mammoth Major - flat out at 27mph. This was normally side loaded using railway sleepers, but for extra heavy indivisibles eg. the drag-lines, the back wheels were wheeled out of the way and a ramp built up once the hydraulic bottle jacks were lowered. The other was lighter and pulled by a Scammel Highwayman - top speed 33mph and the back wheels spun out of the way for loading on that one too.
The driver was a bloke called Tom Collins - not a big guy, but helping him maneuver the wheels was an education in manual handling. No matter how muddy the site, he had worked out how to park and where the pairs of wheels would go and return to mate with the screws on the trailer.
Sorry - no pics., but happy fading memories. Jim.
I was never “lucky” enough to have to knock the wheels out of the low loader that I used to pull. Always managed to employ the 2 or 3 sleeper method, sometimes supplemented by a few oak blocks, although there were a few times when I wondered if I had made the right decision! 