Help building a wagon

At work we have an anhydrous running gear that we want to put a bed on the haul 3 250 gallon Ibc totes. The supports are 10 feet apart. What size and how many boards would I need to get enough support lengthwise. I was guess 4 2x10 would be enough but I'm not sure.

 

"...we want to put a bed on the haul..." What??? Your title mentions a wagon but then you ask about span distance and 2x10's. Are you building a wooden stand for the tanks or a wagon?

 

I think he was saying:
Its 10 ft between the axles. He needs to know what kind of support he needs between the 10ft span to support the totes. I just didn't understand if they will weigh 250 lb.... or if they are 250 gal quantity.
If quantity, we need to know if he is hauling lead or feathers in those totes.

 

Anhydrous weighs about 5 pounds per gallon so each 250 gallon tote will hold about 1'250 pounds of ammonia. Just guessing but four 2x10's should carry the load. A lot will depend on where the bearing points are on the 10' long span. It would really help if you centered the first and last tote over the axels so only the middle tote is being supported in the middle. In that case 2x10's would be a slam dunk overkill.

If you have never moved liquid in totes read up on "free surface affect". Basically it's sloshing. Moving the totes when completely full or empty won't be a problem because all that weight can't move. When the toes are partially filled they will slosh badly which means thousands of pounds sloshing back and forth. This could cause the cart to tip over so giving it as large a footprint as possible would be good.

 

Sorry that was poorly written. We want to haul 3 totes of water. It is 10 foot between the axles

 

I thought anhydrous meant dry..... no liquid. Is that true ?
Are you hauling a dry compound or a liquid ?

 

I'm just going to interject a comment here. Not real answer to the question at hand.

I seen the mention of "anhydrous" but I just assumed that he was referring to the type of trailer/wagon it was initially designed for. Part of that was due to... I thought anhydrous had to be hauled/stored/used in heavy steel containers like propane etc. Immediately, it was just obvious (in my mind) that these totes were not going to be used for anhydrous, so I just by-passed any thought on that, which is why I asked what he was going to haul so we could have a weight to work with.

As far as I know, anhydrous is a liquid. anhydrous also has to be placarded as far as I know.

Let me end by saying I could be wrong on this all the way around, top to bottom & back on this. I honestly don't know for sure but its just my understanding of anhydrous & I didn't take the time to research this before posting.

I see post 5 states he wants to haul water in the 250 gal totes. I think we all know that water weighs approx 8 lb per gal.
I just understood the OP to mean he just wants to re-purpose an old 4 wheeled, 2 axle (one steer in front & one fixed in rear) anhydrous tank trailer/wagon, to make it now a flat bed wagon to haul three 250 gallon totes of water.
I hope this helps.

 

You would be correct. We hade a tank with a broken baffle we took off of the chassis. The more I think about it I might put an old stainless water tank on the this running gear. But I would still be curious on what size boards it would take to hold up a 250 gallon tote

 

This webpage spells it out pretty good......https://plasticinehouse.com/how-far-...thout-support/