DIY car loading ramps??

Are you too far committed in one direction or could you still consider this?  

Off the shelf travel trailer strapped to the Uhaul flatbed and a low and easy to load car trailer on the hitch of the Uhaul towing behind?  

Sample idea but I'm talking even less "integrated." 

The rear overhang on those trucks is enormous- like 8' behind the rear wheels. Driving the front wheels up on a ramp would be easy, and would lower the rear dramatically. 
 

Definitely look for an option the has the ramp attached to the truck. Simple hooks would be fine. 
 

If the car bottoms out on the approach at the transition from the ramp to the truck, lay some 2x6's on the floor under the front wheels of the car. Makes a huge difference. 

Also...

Mount a winch on the floor of that truck. For small cars, a simple ATV winch is sufficient.  It's MUCH safer to load with a winch than to drive the car up. 

In reply to SV reX :

I think this is the way to go.  As you said, rear overhang is huge.  Raising the truck nose in the air will really lower the back.  A set of truck duty ramps should work.  And yes...winch... definitely a winch. 

Instead of guessing how about we do the math. What's the deck height of the truck?  What's the worse angle of approach on the cars?  If you want to WAG that my worse angle of approach is 11 degrees. From doing the math on my trailer search you'll need 10 foot ramps if that deck height is 2 feet and you're going for 11 degrees. 

Edit - Looking at those tires vs deck height I'm pretty sure you're closer to 32 inch deck height. So more like 16 foot ramps. Hmmm ... 

Deck height is 35" as per Uhaul.  I'll go measure the length of the rear overhang tomorrow.  I'm thinking if the front of the truck is on 6" ramps, the tail may be darn close to being on the ground.  

In reply to SKJSS (formerly Klayfish) :

What's the front axle weight?  Gonna be some heavy duty ramps. I wonder if air bags front and rear is the best option. Dump the rear.  Raise the front. 

What about a bi-fold gate? Two 5' sections would net you a 10' ramp, and you'd just need a drop-down leg at the midpoint and maybe a winch to reel it up. You'll already want a winch, so you could probably rig it to do double duty. 

Stampie said:

In reply to SKJSS (formerly Klayfish) :

What's the front axle weight?  Gonna be some heavy duty ramps. I wonder if air bags front and rear is the best option. Dump the rear.  Raise the front. 

I'll see if I can find the front axle weight, but the whole truck is 9780lbs

In reply to SKJSS (formerly Klayfish) :

Your be the cool kid at Lemons if you rolled in, hit your bags, got out and just rolled off the truck. Ok ok I know you'll still need ramps. 

Your answer might be multiple small things.  In that vein, getting Formula Fords into my trailer and over both the ramp and beavertail break points, was greatly simplified by adding 2/10s to the wheel tracks to lift the car up.  Ignore the use case in the pic, but you can see the boards I'm talking about, and also the hinged flip down pieces to cover the ramp hinge.

John Welsh said:

Are you too far committed in one direction or could you still consider this?  

Off the shelf travel trailer strapped to the Uhaul flatbed and a low and easy to load car trailer on the hitch of the Uhaul towing behind?  

Sample idea but I'm talking even less "integrated." 

 

I like this idea the best so far. 

The really high deck height is just a huge bummer for loading cars.

JBinMD said:

Just curious but is yours one of the uhaul box trucks with air suspension in the rear?  

If it isn't air ride I wonder what it would take to convert it? I'd rather drop the air out of the rear to drop the tail that way over carrying a set of ramps you need to drive the front up on. I'm even wondering if you could add a set of bags in the front that you could just inflate to raise that end too. The compressor could come in handy at the track as well.

Motor home leveling jacks installed in the front to raise it up?

Electric powered and you don't have to tote around a set of ramps.

In reply to John Welsh :

This has been a reoccurring dream lately.

lownslow said:

Motor home leveling jacks installed in the front to raise it up?

Electric powered and you don't have to tote around a set of ramps.

Still gonna need ramps. If the rear was sitting on the ground he'd still be 2' high

A 3' deck height is going to be really difficult to overcome for loading a track car. 

Our enclosed trailer has ~16" of deck height.  With a 6' ramp door, I still needed another 6' of race ramps to load our NA Miata without scraping.  The front of the splitter is ~3.5" off the ground.  So that's 12 feet of ramp to get the required approach and break over angles.  The deck height on our stacker is probably 4-6" higher, and I have to raise the front of the trailer to keep the NA from scraping the frame rails over the ramp/trailer junction.

I'm with John Welsh...  a better solution may be mounting the living quarters on the truck and pulling a car trailer.  Bonus is that you don't have to unhook to unload the race car.

Not my pic:

Mounting the living quarters isn't an option, we already have our travel trailer.  With fairly limited mechanical skill and even less time, trying to find a fairly simple solution.  I will start to experiment this afternoon. I will raise the nose of the truck 6 in and see what happens. Not going to try to load anything today, just working on angles 

OP sez:  "Track car will weigh under 2500 (potentially well under 1000)"

Used forklifts are cheap... pallet jacks even cheaper.  

Wasn't the point of this that you wanted the ability to haul 2 cars- (one on the truck, and one on the trailer)?

I know at work, that commecial trailer liftgates are capable of 3000lb... I wonder out loud if you can't buy one and have it grafted onto the back somehow.  They're only 6' long, but what's a few feet between friends...? 

Take a look at that trailer ball. They are usually 2 5/16", and welded in place. 
 

Will that work with your trailer?

Those trucks tow very nicely, and the cabs are basic but reasonably comfy. 

A couple of thoughts. 

I also could see something like this but I would do it as a side load so I could load and unload the car without disconnecting the camper. For reference, that SBS is probably around #1000. 

Could you just mount a hydraulic jib crane on the front and crane your car onto/off of the flatbed? Was thinking helicopter at first but things got expensive in a hurry.

So how much gets you out from under the truck