Folding Gooseneck Trailers

Folding gooseneck trailer
Folding gooseneck trailer

Folding gooseneck trailer for sale from China SinoTrailers.

What is folding gooseneck trailer

Folding gooseneck trailer is a kind of front-loading trailer, different from the RGN trailer, you can load the trailer from the front of the lowbed trailer(could be flatbed trailer) but no need to dismantle the gooseneck from the trailer body. It is widely used for transporting construction machines no matter they are with tires of crawlers.

Lowbed trailer with a foldable neck makes you move construction machines easily even without crane’s lifting. When unhooking from the prime mover, the semi trailer’s neck could be folded to ground as a shallow slope for crawler crane and other machines to drive on. It is one of the popular front-loading trailers, another one is detachable gooseneck trailer.

Conventional lowboy trailer normally equipped with hydraulic ramps at the rear side of the trailer, which can help with the loading of the cargo machines. Because of the height of the trailer, the ramps are steep. If the cargo is too heavy, it would increase risks during loading by the hydraulic ramps.

To resolve above problems happened with rear loading method, we have two types of front-loading trailer to handle them.

The gooseneck is a design with a hydraulic folding structure. When the structure folded, it’s a gooseneck to connect the trailer with the prime mover. When it unfolded, it’s will touch the ground as a shallow slope for cargos loading. Compare to rear ramps, it’s shallow and stable, could effective solutions for cargo loading.

Folding gooseneck trailer drawing
Folding gooseneck trailer drawing

Parts of folding gooseneck trailer

  1. Folding steel structure
  2. Traction gooseneck
  3. Cargo platform
  4. Connecting part between the traction gooseneck and cargo platform
    • Connecting rods
    • Supporting rods
    • Hydraulic cylinders
    • Supporting base
  5. Optional side extensions to adapt over width machines
  6. Standard lasing rings on both sides of the lowboy trailer

Designs of folding gooseneck trailer

  1. One end of the connecting rods hinged with a traction gooseneck(front part of the gooseneck), another end hinged with the lowbed trailer.
  2. The hydraulic cylinder is articulated with a cylinder base and a support base. The cylinder base is welded with the front part of the gooseneck.
  3. There is a rubber anti-skid cushion under a supporting base to stable the folding gooseneck trailer during transportation.
  4. Two cylinders are designed in the gooseneck to increase safety, balance, and stability

The function of folding is realized by hydraulic cylinders and connecting bars which deployed inside the gooseneck. Connecting bars connect parts of the gooseneck and trailer body in an articulated (hinged) way.

Folding gooseneck
Folding gooseneck

Mechanical folding gooseneck trailer

Mechanical folding gooseneck lowbed trailer has a winch attached on the prime mover, there are shafts that have been fixed in the front part and the rear part of the gooseneck. Steel wires are connecting those shafts, by pulling and releasing the steel rope via the winch, can realize the folding and unfolding of the mechanical neck.

Because this type of gooseneck trailer always needs a winch on the tractor, so it replaced by hydraulic folding gooseneck trailer gradually.

Hydraulic folding gooseneck trailer

Hydraulic folding gooseneck lowboy trailer has hydraulic cylinders connecting trailer chassis and connecting rods in the neck. The number of cylinders can be 2 or 4 units.

After the neck folded or unfolded, we can use limited block(stop block) to lock the neck.

Folding neck lowbed trailer
Folding neck lowbed trailer

Operations of hydraulic folding gooseneck semi-trailer

  1. When the neck is erected, using locking pins to lock the front part of the gooseneck and the trailer chassis
  2. The semi-trailer is connected with the tractor
  3. Lowering the cargo platform to touch the ground
  4. Unhook the traction base with traction pin
  5. Drive the tractor off the trailer
  6. Control the hydraulic cylinders and take off the locking pins to unfold the neck on the ground
  7. The unfolding gooseneck become a shallow slope for cargo loading
  8. After the loading process, just reverse the above steps to fold the neck and connect the prime mover

Features of folding gooseneck trailer

  1. Change prime mover or trailer tires:
    • Before lowering the trailer body, put some crossties under the rear part of trailer’s chassis
    • Lower the trailer body, then the tires will be suspended, we may now change the tires easily
    • Using the same method, put some crossties under the front part of the trailer’s chassis, we can change the prime mover accordingly
  2. Adjust the height of the cargo platform
    • Lock the neck with the trailer, retract the hydraulic cylinder to lowering the height of the cargo platform, so the trailer can avoid obstacle overhead
    • Change the position of locking pins, extend the hydraulic cylinder to increase the height of the cargo platform, enable the trailer to pass through rough condition road

Compare to the RGN removable gooseneck trailer, folding gooseneck trailer can increase efficiency of your transport fleet, because when prime mover(tractor) finished one job, it can be detached from the trailer and go for another transport job. And the operator can load and unload cargo simultaneously without presence of the prime mover.

China manufacturer of folding gooseneck trailer – SinoTrailers