I am looking for a HO scale wood chip truck trailer to be used with Walthers Cornerstone Lumber mill and sawmill buildings. I went through Walthers 900+ trucks and trailers, but did find one… The wood chip truck trailer would be similar to a grain hopper truck trailer but without a top. If anyone has a source for me to check please tell me.
Sincerely, Butch McGee
This might be a place to start: http://www.1-87vehicles.org/photo381/fl8664_woodchip.php
When “ho scale wood chip truck trailer” was searched on Google there were over 67,000 hits, so I’m assuming you should be able find something that corresponds to the era you are modeling. Good Luck.
Wayne
I’ve never seen one like that on the road. All I ever see are grain trailers and gravel trailers used to haul wood chips. In Brampton Ontario there is a company that converts Poplar chips to Ethanol. Those chips come from Bancroft Ontario and are trucked to Brampton.
Butch -
Being a truck driver myself, I’ve been to my share of paper mills. It’s fairly common to see ordinary “box” trailers converted to wood chip use, the primary spotting differences would be the addition of small vents near the tops of the sides, and mesh-type rear doors, or “half-doors”. The roof is usually left intact. The wood chips are often blown in, and the trailers tipped or dumped to empty the chips (sometimes with the tractor still attached - drivers will shut off the engines in this case). If a trailer needs to be an “open top”, the tops of the sides will need reinforcement, or the trailers will quickly buckle under the weight. A couple sticks of channel iron (say, 6 to 12 inches) might do the trick. Companies usually aren’t too picky what type of trailers they convert, they usually pick up whatever they can find cheap. No reason you can’t do the same.
Brad
Go to Vancouver B.C. you will see plenty of large chip trucks also around Seattle.
Thank you sfcouple;
Thank You TA462. I live in northern Idaho. We don’t have as many logging mills as in the past . But The highways are frequently full the chip trailers headed to Lewiston, Idaho seaport for shipment to Japan or China.
Thanks twcenterprises ! The majority of the Wood Chip Trailers in northern Idaho have a large hopper on the bottom of the trailer bed. Many of the trailers are three axle.
Thanks tatans !
Thank You for all your inputs. I see the wood chip trucks daily. My layout will have logging, cattle, grain and mining sites in HO scale. I have grain hopper trucks that I may have to convert and and use fine screen to make the top cover and the back door.
Send us a photo when you get one, it will be interesting to see what you find, and hey, I might need one myself[:-^].
Best Wishes,
Wayne
Wood chip trailers are used to transport wood chips to a pulp mill for paper making. Usually, at least in Maine, a large portable chipper is placed near where the trees are cut down and the trees are chipped on site. The chipper would discharge directly into the trailer, thus the need for the screened vents added to the trailer, discussed above. As mentioned, wood chip trailers are generally old trailers that have lived their useful life transporting cargo, and are pretty beat up once they get into wood chip service.
Sawdust from a sawmill is not suitable for paper making because the wood fibers are too short. Sawdust could be used a fuel for an elecrtic power plant or a plant that makes wood pellets for wood pellet stoves.
I worked in a sawmill for 13 years in PA. I have seen my share of chip trailers and know the ins and outs of chipping wood since part of my job was changing knives, maintaining the chipper and switching between trailers. Where I worked, all of the trailers were as Brad mentioned; regular old box trailers with 3 or 4 rectangular vents cut into each side at the front and screen meshed over. The rear doors on our trailers were just the regular doors cut in half and strengthened.
The mill was a hardwood mill. We chipped our slabs off the head saw, the edger and anything that was too thin to make lumber (yes, there is such a thing!). The slabs went into a shaker trough along with the saw dust. The shaker trough had a section with grating in it about 10 feet from the chipper mouth, the saw dust went in there and was blown into our silo (we shipped saw dust and mulch from the debarker also) therefore no sawdust went into the chipper. We sent our chips to Hammermill when they were still in Erie, to Lock Haven and to Roaring Spring (all in PA). I went to Hammermill one night on a ride along. I never saw such an operation in my life. I was amazed at the dump table that lifted the truck up vertically and dumped all the chips out the back (ever see a semi stood on end?) A D9 then pushed the chips up a mountain of chips to be sent into the mill. They also had a crane that could unload a railcar with one swipe of the boom. I was impressed.
Found some try : truck pictures around B.C. on google - - - a bunch of wood chip trucks
AROUND KAMLOOPS B.C.
What part of N.Idaho? A trip to Spokane and Inland Empire Paper will show you stuff. They have a truck dumper also. Email me privately if you wish more info.
ctclibby
I used to haul wood chips to a power plant in PA. Most of the trailers that I saw there were the vented dry box trailers as previously described, but there were also quite a few walking floor trailers, such as mine. The below photo shows a walking floor trailer on the tipper. Walking floor trailers are commonly used for mulch, wood chips, and feed/grain (and yes, trash…)
Here is a line drawing (no scale given) of the typical BC/Alberta chip truck: http://www.arrow.ca/Equipment/ChipBTrain.html
Sorry, they seem to have taken the photo album down [#oops]
The Arrow site also has lots of photos of their equipment in use.