You guys down under, sure have a different idea of a trailer than we do, I'll grant you that, liked the photo's so we could see what you run down there, I don't think I'll trade with you though for anything, either you don't have winter with snow and ice to contend with, height issues, or uneven driveways to contend with, theres no way on earth I'd ever get to where I needed to go with an axle spead like that, steerable would be somewhat better, but just more to fix and go wrong over time, also whats the legal width down there, here its 8 foot 6 inches, those sides hang over past the axles pretty far by the photo's, we need outriggers here for wide loads and 3-4 feet off the ground is pretty far up to have almost nothing sitting on the trailer and everything sitting on outriggers and boards.
I'm also curious, how many machines have you laid over the side either while loading or unloading or had slid off the side and flop onto the machines side? Don't you have tight corners and trecherous hills to work around? With the machines sitting above the axles and over the sides past the width of the axles, your pretty top heavy and your center of gravity is high, how do you handle that issue. Also what tire size and brake drum sizes are on the trailers down there, by the photo's I thought they looked smaller and in metric didn't mean anything to me, around here 22.5 run larger drums and brakes than the smaller 17.5's do and have less brake problems with brake fade, almost all detaches have the larger brakes, drums and tires on them, deck height would be over 4 foot heigh to get the best of all worlds, also are machines down there somehow smaller in size or designed lower loaded height than here in the states? I know you mentioned in meters which was about 14ft 1 or 2 inches, but does everything fit in that height or less and do the equipment manufacters cater to the traler industry somehow to get that?
To me those look like a glorified step deck with a hydraulic tail on them, do the outriggers hydraulicly widen out too somehow? And also does the trailer main frame narrow or shorten up in height as it goes over the four axles or how does that work, do they run double frames above the axles or are the axles underslung like truck steer axles are here or how do they work, I couldn't tell in the photo's? Sorry for all the questions but I'm trying to figure out how you can haul 50 ton plus on those trailers and have the frame heavy enough to do so, how about really heavy loads like say 80 ton plus, here they run steerable axles out the back and a dolley up front between the truck and trailer to scale more axle weight, hows it done down there or how do you add to those trailers to get up to get up to really heavy haul?