Hopper Basics

name's Kenny Powers and I Drive for Dodge City Express thank you for watching this video I'm going to attempt to show you how to take care and load and unload a hopper and everything that goes with it so I'll just take you through a little bit of a tour here so this is a hopper and this your ladder and over here is where your catwalk is where you can stand and up there's your handrails to get up in the trailer to stand up and look sometimes you end up having to go into hopper like hauling big rocks sometimes they dump them on the edges and what you do there to rake them off you get in the hopper with on top of the rocks you break them off or you can do it with a broom you don't want to cut the tarp and it might cut the tarp those rocks if you tarp it shut if it gets caught under there alright now under here you can see we got the fifth wheel set to the front it's set all the way to the front and we're about 13,000 on the steers and about 12,000 or out 33,000 on the drives so what what rides pretty good and what the boss wants so on the hover rails right here and here they're on all four sides if when you crank it here you've got your your high speed let's see which one is it yeah that's the high speed I think that's your look that's your low speed right there this is the high speed this one will crank hard so just switch to the other one and it'll crank easy if it depending on what's in there now when you hit on these rails don't hit the hopper itself yet right in along here with with the hammer and you use a dead blow hammer don't use steel on a woman that will obviously tear up the aluminum and I'll get the hand crank out here my crank in the side box okay these are not cheap so we don't just leave them laying around everywhere okay you put it you take it off you put it back in your side box you don't leave it lay anywhere it's going to be fun cranking the hopper open with a rich okay so just put your crank here and then you loosen that and then you crank it open in a one-load now the track for the the door is on the back here which means it's going to open from the front so when you unload this front hopper you're going to want to make sure that you start with the gate on the ground where the you know to unload right even with that now with the back hopper it's the opposite the track opens to the front which means you will want to start the back edge of that that grate on the floor where the grain goes down to the back as it'll go back forward so it's just some tips on how to do that now when you open up the gate nothing happens sometimes so we have what we call vibrators right here this one runs the front one and this one runs the back one okay so you're getting thousand happens right don't panic you get this vibrator you get you they blow hammer you tap on that rail get it pretty good it should start coming out 99% of the time it will also wanted to show you the weight gauge under here this one for some special reason is current sideways this is your weight gauge which we are at right around 60 61 that's your dump valve for the trailer now when we were unloading say Milo or corn something that comes out real fast dump that valve on the back of the trailer is that it can't blow an air bag so that's what we do with that so pretty much it's pretty straightforward that's your vibrators down here on the hopper on the bottom they work pretty they're pretty nice and we're pretty smooth so I'll come back here and I'll show you how to create Qatar and you get a close-up of that tarp over there his handle is turned down if you notice the handle is turned down the problem with this is he blows a tire it will rip that handle off then you'll have to crank the tarp with a pipe wrench that won't be very fun so let me show you what what you can do you notice this one is turned up so how do you do that that being up there at the top there's a pin there that comes out you slide your that out you turn it half a turn and you put it back on and you put that pin back in and you're good to go that way you don't lose yo your handle if you would happen to blow a tire now we keep the tarp shut if after we wash out a trailer and leave the gates open and the bottom air will go in there and circulate around and dry the inside of the trailer to offer you really don't too often want to go down the road with the tarp open when can catch it it can rip it off it's just that's good practice to keep your tarp shut where possible so anyway that's some basics on pulling a hopper and uh thank you for watching all right god bless

Channel: Dodge City Express

Views: 15,115

Rating: 4.9480519 out of 5

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Id: z1kOGf-IcPc

Length: 8min 9sec (489 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 18 2014