Truck Camper Dolly by Rieco

bb_94401 wrote:
You'll notice on the front of the Rieco cart there are two clips for mounting a tow bar to maneuver the cart. I used a Curt Tow Bars (C19745) to make it easy to start, move and stop the loaded cart with the tractor. Thinking ahead about how to stop the loaded cart, once moving, is a very important safety consideration. If you don't have a tractor, you can easily rotate a caster and lock it in place, using a small hydraulic jack to take some of the weight off to make turning easier.



Having all four swivel casters on a cart makes directional control very difficult. Typically for very heavy loads on a cart, the front two are fixed and the rear two are swivel to maintain tracking. A good compromise is to select casters with a four position swivel lock.

I used 8" dia, 2" wide, Polyurethane on Steel casters with the swivel locks.



I lock the fronts to steer the camper into place and then rotate all the casters, 90 degrees and lock all of them to push the camper against the wall. I didn't order the caster brakes and just made chocks.

To aid in pulling it away from the wall I also installed 1/2 inch Eye Nuts on the sides, in the corners, and rig a line to them.



I didn't attach carpeting to the cart, as the empty cart makes a great work / project surface in the garage.

I tip the cart up against the back wall of the garage, when not in use, using the boom pole on the tractor attached to the Eye nuts.

Thank you for the detailed response. This gives me more to think about.

One question I have though is how hard is it to push your dolly by hand? Do you think with good casters, on a level cement floor, should I be able to push a 4000# camper by hand (I'm pretty strong, relatively speaking.)?

I live in PA during the winter (MT in the summer) and National Caster is located only about 30 miles away. I think I'll go there to discuss the best casters for camper dolly applications. There are so many different ones to choose from.