Standard ramps are ruining your floor sweepers. But how else can you haul them? If you’re looking for the best trailers for floor sweepers, you’ve got a lot to consider.
Floor sweepers aren’t heavy like skid steers or excavators, but they are far more fragile. If you’re a rental fleet operator, cleaning contractor, or multi-site manager, using basic ramp-style utility trailer is costing you thousands in scraped undersides, torn squeegees, and dangerous loading conditions.
Here’s how Good Trailers can solve these geometry problems.
Table of Contents
- Solve the Breakover Problem
- Avoid Traction Failures
- Say Goodbye to Ramp Rung Gaps
- Keep Tanks Level
- End Tie-Down Nightmares
- Handle the Wet
- Which Trailer is Right for Your Floor Sweeper?
- FAQ
- Key Takeaways
- Load Low, Haul Good
The Breakover Problem
Tired of watching broom skirts or squeegees getting ripped off or crushed every time a sweeper high centers?
Sweepers have low ground clearance, often just 1.5 to 3 inches. This allows them to maintain suction, trap dust, and house main brooms or squeegees. When driving up standard folding or slide-out ramps, the machine gets “high-centered” right at the apex where the ramp meets the trailer deck.
The undercarriage gets damaged, the cleaning mechanisms get damaged, and you’re left with expensive repairs and downtime.
What if there was no apex?
What if you could bring the trailer all the way down to ground level at the touch of a button? What if you could roll your sweeper up a 22″, 75.4″ ramp at a low 11° angle instead?
Avoid Traction Failures
Electric ride-on sweepers use small drive motors optimized for flat indoor surfaces, not climbing incline angles. On a typical 15-20° ramp, sweepers can stall out midway up. Worse, if the ramp is wet, steel, or diamond plate, the sweeper’s small, smooth, non-marking tires spin freely. There is also a genuine risk of ride-on models tipping backwards due to a high center of mass, especially if you have rear battery banks or empty front hoppers.
With a Good Trailer, the low-incline ramp makes it easy to roll on without creating the conditions that might cause the vehicle to stall.
Ramp Rung Gaps
What if you aren’t renting out a ride-on industrial sweeper this week? What if you’re renting someone a walk-behind instead?
Sweepers and walk-behinds don’t have large pneumatic truck tires. They run on small solid rubber, polyurethane, or caster wheels. On traditional ladder-style or wire-mesh trailer ramps, these small wheels sink into the gaps, lock up, or twist the casters sideways, causing the machine to dump its load or tip over mid-ramp.
Our smooth, sleek, fold out wide ramp offers absolutely no rung gaps. Just roll your walk-behinds right on board.
Keep Tanks Level
Scrubbers and sweepers carry clean water, dirty recovery water, or heavy battery banks. If a wet scrubber is loaded onto a steep ramp while full, liquid sloshes to the rear, suddenly shifting the machine’s center of gravity and making it back heavy.
Plus, battery acid or dirty water can spill across the trailer bed during steep angle loading.
With a Good Trailer, ground-level loading at aa gentle angle helps to keep tanks mostly level. The angle is about comparable to entering a driveway from the street. This prevents more spills during the loading process.
End Tie Down Nightmares
Commercial sweepers are enclosed in fiberglass or plastic body shrouds covering sensitive electronics, dust vacuum hoses, and hydraulic lines. Operators often struggle to find solid structural steel points for ratchet straps or chains. Strapping over the plastic shell will crush it, while hooking onto fragile broom arms or steering rods will bend the alignment.
If you add one of our E-track systems to your enclosed trailer it’s easy to secure the machine directly to the walls without touching the body paneling. This protects your equipment from further damage and helps get the delivery to the customer or the machine to the job site that much faster.
Handle the Wet
Most trailer floors are ruined by floor scrubbers within six months. Wood decking absorbs dirty recovery water and rots out, while bare steel rusts from battery acid drips.
Enclosed drop deck trailers by GoodMFG® feature heavy-duty TPO (thermoplastic polyolefin) flooring, providing a seamless, 100% waterproof barrier that wipes clean and won’t degrade. And because our hydraulic drop-deck eliminates steep loading ramps, your sweeper rolls right in without tire-spin.
Which Trailer for Your Floor Sweeper?
A GT19AL enclosed drop deck trailer from GoodMFG® can handle any variety of sweeper up to and including heavy industrial or combination sweepers. It offers 7,929 lbs. of carrying capacity as well as several other advantages that make it the right choice for your sweeper.
- Protect delicate electronics. The enclosed trailer protects your sweepers from road spray, highway rain, mud, and road salt that can wreck your exposed vacuum impellers, dust filter bags, and onboard battery chargers.
- Reduce the risks of theft and vandalism. Industrial sweepers can cost as much as $60,000, and thieves know it. With the GT19AL, your sweeper can be locked out of sight whenever it’s not in use.
- Insulated protection. If you’re hauling a wet scrubber with solution in the tank, you don’t want to leave it exposed to freezing highway temperatures in the wintertime. The cold can crack internal pumps and wreck solution lines or recovery tanks. Our enclosed trailers offer internal protection above and beyond most because they’re built with insulated composite aluminum panels: 1.5″ of polystyrene sandwiched between #5052 aluminum panels that provide enough insulation to protect your sweepers from this type of environmental damage.
- Build a mobile service shop. If you’re a janitorial contractor you will want to haul more than that sweeper. You might want to add spare broom skirts, replacement squeegee blades, extra detergent, battery chargers, washdown hoses, and more. An enclosed trailer gives you the power to create a complete multi-facility maintenance rig. Especially if you take advantage of some add-ons like E-track or shelf storage.
If you are using a walk behind or an especially light sweeper you might be able to spend some money by using the GT13AL instead.
FAQ
Why are standard ramp utility trailers bad for hauling floor sweepers?
Ground clearance on commercial sweepers is often just 1.5 to 3 inches. Standard 15-20° ramps cause low-slung machines to high-center at the breakover point, destroying delicate squeegees, broom skirts, and undercarriages.
Can a drop deck trailer handle both ride-on and walk behind sweepers?
Yes. The full-width, smooth folding ramp has no ladder rungs or wire mesh gaps, allowing small caster wheels, polyurethane rollers, and heavy ride-on units to roll on without tipping or getting stuck.
How does ground-level loading prevent dirty water or battery acid spills?
Loading at an 11° angle—similar to pulling into a driveway—keeps machine solution tanks, recovery water, and battery banks level. This eliminates drastic fluid sloshing, rearward weight shifts, and battery acid leaks during loading.
How do you safely tie down a floor sweeper without crushing its plastic body panels?
Instead of strapping over fragile fiberglass shrouds or hooking onto weak steering arms, adding an integrated E-track wall system allows you to secure machines directly to the trailer structure without touching delicate exterior components.
Key Takeaways
Still not sure whether Good Trailers are the best trailers for floor sweepers? Here’s the TL;DR that can help you make your decision.
- Commercial GT19AL design. Seamless TPO chemical-proof flooring, insulated composite aluminum panel walls, and optional E-track securement systems make the GT19AL the ultimate enclosed hauling platform for sweepers up to 7,929 lbs.
- Eliminate breakover damage. A 5.4″ deck height and an 11° full-width folding ramp prevent low-clearance squeegees and broom skirts from scraping or high-centering.
- No rung gap catches. Smooth, solid folding ramps allow small polyurethane wheels and walk-behind casters to roll on safely without locking up.
- Spill-free level loading. Flat ground-level lowering keeps clean water, recovery liquid, and battery banks level, preventing spills and weight-shift tip-overs.
Sweeping Better Solutions Your Way
Seeing why Good Trailers by GoodMFG° might be the best trailers for floor sweepers? If so, it’s time to upgrade. Find your nearest dealer today. Can’t find a dealer near you? Reach out to our office for options.
See also:
Are Good Trailers Difficult to Service & Repair?
The Top 4 Advantages of Trailers that Lower to the Ground
This Compact Street Sweeper Trailer Lets You Stop Scraping and Start Saving
This resource was compiled by the GoodMFG® Product Team, drawing on 75 years of combined experience in hydraulic systems, heavy-duty transport, trailers, and modular structures.
P.S. – We build trailers every day, but we don’t run your crews. If there’s a specific logistical headache or a “field reality” we’ve missed, we want to hear about it. Help us refine the equipment that makes your day easier! Email our Marketing Lead at devan-h @ goodrv.com and let us know what we should solve next.
