Patent Application
20190009703
For a more complete understanding of the present invention, including its features and advantages, reference is now made to the detailed description of the invention taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawing in which:
While the making and using of various embodiments of the present invention are discussed in detail below, it should be appreciated that the present invention provides many applicable inventive concepts that may be embodied in a wide variety of specific contexts. The specific embodiments discussed herein are merely illustrative of specific ways to make and use the invention and do not delimit the scope of the invention.
A car carrier trailer, known variously as a stinger car-carrying trailer, car hauler, auto transport trailer, etc., is a type of trailer or semi-trailer designed to efficiently transport passenger vehicles via truck.
Modern car carrier trailers can be open or enclosed. Most commercial trailers have built-in ramps for loading and off-loading cars, as well as power hydraulics to raise and lower ramps for stand-alone accessibility.
Commercial-size car carrying trailers are commonly used to ship new cars from the manufacturer to auto dealerships; in the U.S., shipping of used vehicles is also a big industry, employed by car owners who are relocating and choose to ship their cars instead of driving, as well as consumers who have just purchased a vehicle on the second-hand market (particularly online) and need it delivered to their location.
Like other semi-trailers, most commercial car carrier trailers attach to the tractor using a fifth wheel coupling. Trailers can either be enclosed, possessing walls like a conventional box trailer, which affords the shipped vehicles more protection at the cost of lower capacity; or open, as in the commonly seen skeletal tube steel design, which exposes the vehicles to the elements but allows for greater carrying capacity. An American commercial car carrier typically fits between 5 to 9 cars, depending on the car size and trailer model (capacity is limited by an 80,000 lb. weight cap that a road vehicle is subject to under U.S. law). Significantly higher-capacity vehicles have been observed around the world, such as a side-by-side loading Chinese model.
Open commercial car carrier trailers typically have a double-decker design, with both decks subdivided into a variety of loading and storage ramps that can be tilted and lifted independently of one another with hydraulics. Unlike flatbed tow trucks, which often need to transport non-running vehicles, car carrier trailers are not equipped with loaders or winches, instead relying on the vehicles to be loaded under their own power. The trailer hydraulics allow the ramps to be aligned on a slope so cars can be driven up and secured to the ramp floor with chains, tie-down ratchets or wheel straps, after which the ramp can be tilted in any direction to optimize stacking.
To load vehicles on the top deck of a double-decker commercial trailer, the rear half of the deck can tilt and be lowered hydraulically, forming a drive-up ramp to the upper deck. The top deck is usually loaded first and off-loaded last, since the presence of cars on the lower deck can make it impossible to lower the top deck ramp. Trailer hydraulics are usually operated using a control box mounted on the trailer itself.
One common issue is how to use one of these commercial class 8 trailer with a high mount installed fifth wheel with a stinger type semi-trailer. Stinger type semi-trailers are commonly used for transporting cars, but need to be attached to a semi-trailer truck that has lower fifth wheel assembly behind the rear axle.
There are many configurations that have been developed to transport these types of cars, with use of commercial trailer with a fifth wheel installed above the tandem wheels, but they are usually custom made to fit an individual trailer and not usable on other high mount fifth wheel semi-trailers. Although new systems and methods of utilizing a commercial trailer with this type of configuration are constantly being developed, an efficient and universal fifth wheel convertor for a stinger trailer needs to be developed in order to achieve even more cost savings. Accordingly, a new system and method has been developed and is an embodiment of the present invention.
The present invention includes a regular class 8 commercial trailer 100 and a stinger convertor 200 that attaches the commercial trailer's fifth wheel to a stinger trailer 110.
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Although this invention has been described with reference to an illustrative embodiment, this description is not intended to limit the scope of the invention. Various modifications and combinations of the illustrative embodiments as well as other embodiments of the invention will be apparent to persons skilled in the art upon reference to the description. It is therefore intended that the appended claims accomplish any such modifications or embodiments.
