Tilt-bed truck

One method, two different trucks

Every container that leaves the Woodlawn yard rides out on a tilt-bed. That part never changes from order to order. What changes is which vehicle is pulling the trailer, and that call gets made by your driveway, not by the size of the container.

The same tilt-bed rides behind either vehicle. Hitched to a straight truck, the whole outfit is shorter and comes around inside a tighter arc, which is what a switchbacked driveway or a tight gateway demands. Behind a road tractor it stretches out, tracks easier on open ground, and wants more space to enter and reverse out. The trailer doing the actual work is identical either way.

What actually happens when the bed tilts

The trailer's rear hinges down toward the ground while the front lifts, turning the bed into a shallow ramp. From there gravity does the unloading. The driver creeps ahead, the box stays put on the ground it has already reached, and the trailer walks out from under it. Nothing is ever picked up and set down, so no crane, forklift or second machine has to reach your site at all.

Once the container is off the trailer, our crew sets it on blocks and levels it before the truck leaves. That part is free within 75 road miles of Woodlawn and happens on every delivery, sale or rental.

The one number a tilt-bed can't work around

The box comes off while the truck is still rolling, so the measurement that matters runs lengthwise, ahead of the spot you picked. An opening no bigger than the container itself will not do it. Plan on about 65 feet of straight clearance for a 20-ft container and about 95 feet for a 40-ft, plus 10 to 12 feet of width for the truck and trailer.

Container length and the geometry of the slide set that figure. Nothing about the vehicle on the front of the trailer changes it, so a straight truck and a tractor-trailer both want the same run once the box is the same length.

What a tilt-bed can't do

A tilt-bed needs that straight run and clear sky above it, since the front of the container rises several feet in the air partway through the slide. A site with no straight approach at all, or a canopy of low branches and wires the whole way in, can be a real problem for this method.

Other corners of the industry solve tight sites with different equipment: a roll-off truck winches a box up rails, a side loader lifts it with arms mounted along the truck, a crane set lifts it clear of the ground entirely. Containers Delivered runs tilt-bed trucks only, so describe a tight site to us before assuming delivery won't work. Most sites that look tight from the road turn out fine once someone walks them.