Founded in 2008. The Landscape Juice Network (LJN) is the largest and fastest growing professional landscaping and horticultural association in the United Kingdom.
LJN's professional business forum is unrivalled and open to anyone within within the UK landscape industry
LJN's Business Objectives Group (BOG) is for any Pro serious about building their business.
For the researching visitor there's a wealth of landscaping ideas, garden design ideas, lawn advice tips and advice about garden maintenance.
Replies
A plant trailer is best if your shifting lots of plant as both the tail and the bed are very low to the ground making loading diggers etc easy and they ride well and are stable on a nice low centre of gravity.
For everything else a plant trailer is not the best choice in my opinion.
A drop side trailer allows you to drop all sides which makes loading and unloading materials into it much much easier and more versatile as it can be done from all sides rather than just from the back door/ramp.
Its also much more suitable for collecting materials as a forklift can set things onto it. rather than with a plant or general purpose trailer which requires a grab of some sort to lower materials into it.
For picking up sand etc this probably isn't an issue as it'll be dropped in by a loading shovel but a flatbed is so much more versatile for materials loading.
The other big advantage is load space relative to width. Because a dropside has the wheels underneath the bed/ deck the load space is the full width, whereas an 8x5 plant trailer will be 5' minus wheels on either side so the load space will be about 400mm narrower than the trailer width.
So a dropside can give you a good 5' load area but still be as narrow as your van whereas a plant trailer with 5' load space will be a foot and a half wider than your van which makes driving with it in residential streets more of a pain.
In short if your using it to carry plant or perhaps a large ride on then get a plant or general purpose trailer with outboard wheels.
If its mainly for materials, waste or general items then get a dropside.
Or of course you can get a tipper dropside which is even better for waste etc but just be aware of the weight and how that affects your train weight as they are heavy brutes.
This is all just my experience though.
Have a look on ebay for ifor williams trailers or similar (steel galvanised) and make sure the one you get is rated to carry a ton or more. The trouble is decent trailers can cost hundreds or even thousands of pounds even second hand, and cheap bargains can be stolen equipment! how about hiring one from a hire shop? surely theres somewhere that does it? Otherwise you could find you've bought an expensive piece of kit that only gets used twice a year!
Well said Gary,
decent trailers are thief magnets so any seller should be happy to tell you the chassis number and post photos of it on any online auction if you ask them. Best to view it in person before bidding, and recheck it if you win it before paying!
A mate of mine almost got stung with a mini excavator for sale on Ebay, the seller said she wanted the money transferring to an account other than paypal and also tried rushing him into buying it without seeing it (as it was a buy-it-now auction), so he backed out. when he contacted Ebay about it, they said that seller had since been suspended and was under investigation!