Well it happened. I found a good deal on a penske truck with 87,000 miles on it. I am going to be flying to California to pick it up in a few weeks and driving it to Arizona to store for the winter at my best friends house the next few months and trying to order everything i need to upgrade. The good news is im upgrading, the bad news is that i have to be very smart about what im ordering and could really use your input on setup and what equipment you guys would use. Im trying to be efficient about this as well and thats hard to do when you have a lot of moving parts like i do to get everything going and are so far away.
A lot of you guys are on the eastern side of the country. Do any of you guys know of reputable places on the western side to purchase equipment? What are your thoughts as to layout? My thoughts to layout are stacking reels at the front of the door, and leaving room to be able to drop pallets to the right of it because the only way i can order 12.5% SH is through having it barged on a ship up here and wont be able to just use a pump to refill when needed so need that free space. the rear next to cab will have a new PW and i think ill be cutting out an RV access door for exhaust to go out of.
Ideally i could use a place that knows what they are doing to help me with installing my equipment in the truck as im going to be a real fish out of water here with limited access to tools and in a different part of the country than im used to along with limited time to be able to be down south.
What are yalls thoughts?
Equipment i think im needing
8gpm machine and mount
3 way proportioner
Soap tank
Water tank
SH tank
Hudson float valve for water
Hannay reels x3 and stack kit
RV access door kit
Some sort of holesaw to be able to make a vent for SH tank
All fittings required to make everything work as well
Its a little overwhelming as im coming from a 4gpm setup that is very mobile to something like this which is pretty stationary but i would like to have this completely self contained, and keep all my original equipment ive used last year as a backup to load into my f150 in case this beast experiences down time.
Looks like youre on a great path! Im a 4 gallon guy too currently. I just picked up a 5x10 to outfit with the latest and greatest. Im sure i dont have the room or budget though. So we’ll see. Ill be following this thread for info to set mine up. Good luck to you on your build
I’m surprised it has a wooden floor. All the Hertz ones I 've looked at had an aluminum. Also, did you think about just getting a cargo van. Lot of guys run out of those. Are you going to change your company colors to yellow or paint or wrap it?
Looks in good shape though. You’ll be the big dog up there with that. Be sure to allocate some space to carry various chemicals and other supplies and spares.
i did mull the idea of a cargo van over but ultimately decided on a box truck. This way i am able to store bulk SH easier. If i can shove a pallet in here from the shipyard i can put 55 gallon drums or an ibc tote of SH in here using a floorjack. I dont have access to a forklift or storage like that unfortunately.
If i had a van, i would need a place i could hook up to a SH tank and fill my tanks in the van but there’s no place that i know of where i can store that…at least for now.
The plan for the truck is to wrap it while im down there in Las Vegas most likely.
I feel logistically im still getting boned. I would assume being able to buy a pallet of 55 gallon drums from down south and shipping them up there is the way to go but storing a pallet of 4 of them or a 275 tote seems like a huge amount of space being taken up. Not to mention my payload is right at 4000lbs and im assuming that id want to stay well under that. Also, storing it long term in the box (i plan on venting) is probably the only option i have. Actually, brainstorming say i order a pallet of 55gal drums…i could put them in my f150 and then use a pump to transfer what i need for the day into the box truck but then ive got like 4 barrels of the stuff outside and sloshing around in my truck (its my personal vehicle) which is probably not good for its shelf life.
Ive already bought my spares for next year and even have new kevlar hose and such ready to go! Have nothing but time to plan for the summer as its been snowing for quite some time and im completely shut down for the winter.
Its kind of funny because any sort of GPM upgrades i want to do will wreak havoc on my SH percentages so i need to upgrade pressurewasher as well as get my 12.5% SH issue squared away. If i upgrade from 4gpm to 5.5 or 8 my 7.5% costco bleach might not cut it any more!
Have you thought about getting a 5.5gpm hotwater skid. would extend your season some and let you do decent sized commercial flatwork. Can you not buy drums of bleach up there? I wouldn’t be caught carrying 4 drums w/o DOT registration. You’d be lucky to even get back thru Canada with it or would you ship truck and all on boat? Why can’t you store SH at your house outside?
No drums of bleach available up here. I can get drums from Washington and have them put on a shipping container barge and then pick them up locally. You dont even want to know how much it costs to have that done but if i have to pour 30ish bottles into a 55 gallon tank for batch mixing again i might go insane
I could store SH at my house outside but the problem i run into is actually getting the drums off the box truck or the back of my truck. I have no forklift or anything like that. I could buy a big aluminum ramp but i dont know how safe that would be trying to manhandle these things down one by one. Also, if its stored outside I wonder how good they would be potent for. Do they off gas or pressurize enough to cause an issue if they are sitting out there? Our warmest month is July where the average highest temp is 65 so its not too crazy.
FYI last quote i received for SH from Washington was this March so im sure prices have gone up and it was 4.50 a gallon for a 275gallon tote (1237$) plus shipping vial Alaska Marine Lines (920$) for a total of $2157.00
Mine sit outside all the time, in the shade, but ambiant temp in 80-90 during summer. But mine never older than 2-3 weeks from factory till out the end of my gun If you good with tote, keep it covered, sunlight doesn’t help SH. But it’ll be at least a month old by the time it gets to you.
They make a drum hand truck, but not cheap. Or you could just roll them off back of truck onto a tire. Sure @Innocentbystander has done and I have too. Better have some help to stand back up though. Or just buy you some spare barrels to keep and pump out of tote into barrels wherever they’re sitting. Keep one on truck. Would take less than an hour.
I was going to possibly need to move 55s to our remote shop when we had it. I considered getting a 1-ton chain hoisy, and hooking up one of these drum slings we use on the forklift around the shop. You could get a couple of those 55 gallon drum dollys if need be…
Also, as usual, @Racer is spot on with driving it around. As far as I know, you’re OK up to 119 gallons on board, beyond that a hazmat placard is req’d. Not something you want to be messing with as a regular plan anyway. Maybe a one-off, “in a pinch” move of stock, but as a normal routine plan, definitely not a good idea.
I would be concerned about the SH gassing off and ruining the inside of your box and all the equipment in it. I stored my SH next to an old machine in my garage and it put a solid patina that had not existed previously
I don’t see how you are going to go through 4 x 55 gallon drums in a quick enough time for them to still be viable? Unless you plan on just killing it each and every day.
I don’t see why you’d be concerned about upgrading to a higher gpm unit. The 7.5% SH you are using can still work, you just need to change the draw ratio…whether it is with a different injector or with a different batch mix (not sure if you are making batches or how you are currently doing it).
As far as moving pallets with no forklift, consider either getting a lift gate installed on the back of the box truck or finding a neighbor with a tractor/skid steer to install pallet forks on.
Congratulations @Dallsheep - I read all of your posts and am happy for your upgrade. Best of luck - I will be making the 8gpm upgrade soon myself and hope to learn from your experience and will share what I can. Great news sir!
I’m not sure you can set up your box truck for PW and haul pallet loads of stuff, if I understand your intent. I am also not sure if you are saying you could pick up a pallet load of SH drums in your pickup. SH is about 10 lb a gallon. A drum (for me) is in excess of 500 lbs, not including pallet weight and banding plus weight of containers. Now if you are making multiple trips or not taking a full pallet load that is different.
Forget a forklift, do any of your friends/neighbors have a tractor? If so, you can buy the pallet forks or (i don’t like these personally) the clamp/bolt on forks. I have an aluminum ramp like the moving box trucks have for dolly use. That thing will hold several hefty fellas, a dolly, and a piece of equipment. Moving a full drum on a dolly would be a chore solo. I know my big dolly wouldn’t work, probably need solid tires for that. Just redneck engineer something, it is how this country began, 2x10’s with some bracing and roll down the barrel with a tire stopper.
Last winter we dropped off faster than expected, and I wound up with about a month’s supply leftover between the 2 locations. I left them in the tank untouched (in a dark, somewhat climate controlled WH). We used it up in March, a good 6-7 months after I got it delivered. I didn’t test it, but it was functioning similarly to about 8% at that point. Not the end of the world.
I definitely made sure the guys knew when the new stuff came in though
I still have about 600 that is sitting right about 3 months in my tank right now…
the 4gpm is still usable, but i would love the increased rinsing capability of a larger setup. using my 5 gal buckets of straight 7.5% i did some testing and it was like .68 percent at the gun or around there. Im not sure how low i can go, but with a 5.5 or an 8 that dilution percentage is going to probably be around .4 or .5 after downstreaming. It would make sense to make sure i can keep a mix thats not diluted enough to render my upgraded PW worthless if that makes sense.
No neighbors with a forklift or tractor unfortunately. youre right about the 4 drums. if i can have them last for 5-6 months without going lower than 7.5% or so im golden. Two is probably much more reasonable, but if i can have all 4 shipped on same pallet for a similar or negligible difference in shipping that would be a deciding factor!
Im still in the figuring it out stage so thank you for your input!
my trucks payload capacity is right at 2000lbs so id be cutting it close thats for sure. It would be much smarter for me to get 2 at a time but it comes down to logistics and how much extra shipping im spending getting 2 drums at a time vs 4 drums. I have a friend who will let me store a tote or pallet in his boat condo/shop who has a forklift so if i can get it there im golden.
No friends with anything cool like a tractor or anything. That would be too convenient!
