Dave's Fish Creek Dock Project
Trailer Support Rack for Dock
For our next trip in July 2007, we had our new dock supports welded up and attached to our trailer. I designed these to carry the dock sections above the boat. Not a great design due to the weight of the dock. This was not a stable platforum for transporting the dock, and it took a lot of effort to get each section up there! Not only that, but since I was strapping down each section, it was a long task as well. Luckily we didn't have far to drive since this setup was VERY shakey. We would later have to improve on this poorly thought out system. (I'm a computer geek not an engineer).
While in storage, I placed all the dock legs up above the boat as well. I think I even transported everything that way once or twice... dumb...
It wasn't until June of 2008 that we came up with a better solution. It finally dawned on me that carrying the dock on the SIDE of the dock support rack made more sense! So I went back to the drawing board and came up with a design for brackets that would slip over the vertical supports on the trailer which would hold the dock sections sideways on the outside of the dock supports. Two 2ft x 8ft sections on one side of the trailer and the 4ft x 6ft section on the opposite side. The lighter 8ft gang plank would remain up on top of the rack resting on the 2x4 cross braces.
The dock support brackets worked quite well!
MUCH better system. Now we limit the amount of lifting we are doing and the dock is much more stable on the trailer. It also requires a lot less time to tie down the dock sections.
Our current method is to remove the dock decking whenever we take out the dock. This turns out to be much faster and a lot less weight to deal with during assembly and removal of the dock. The decking is transported to our storage facility in the back of the truck, and only the aluminum dock frame is transported on the sides of the boat trailer...
Last updated: June 02, 2011 12:00:00
