Do you run crews that spend their days struggling with Enphase 5P or EG4 wall pack residential batteries?
Then you already know heavy battery transport can become a headache. Standard trailers and box trucks, with their steep, narrow ramps, can create real problems. So can lift gate box trucks, especially in areas of the country where a homeowner is just as likely as not to live on a street that sits on a sharp incline, where sharp inclines can become unstable.
Because while a residential battery rarely weighs more than 700 pounds, they’re fragile pieces of equipment that are packed with all sorts of sensitive electronics. It takes just one mistake in suboptimal circumstances to micro-fracture components or void warranties.
Since one dropped battery can lead to a host of problems—including, in some cases, wiping out the net profit of the entire installation project—smart solar companies are turning to alternatives like GT19AL hydraulic enclosed drop deck trailers.
table of contents
Better Loading for Fragile Batteries
Swap out your super long and super steep ramp, or your touchy liftgate, for ground-level loading.
Our enclosed hydraulic drop deck trailers retract their wheels at the touch of a button, lowering the chassis flush to the ground in less than 60 seconds. You then unfold a 74″ wide ramp that is just 1’10” long. It sits at a gentle 11° loading angle.
This means a single installer can effortlessly roll a 500-pound battery straight onto the trailer using a standard hand truck. No high-centering at the apex. No roll-backs. No getting your wheels caught in the gap between the ramp and the ground. No wasted time. No gritting your teeth hoping you’re not about to start your day with a busted battery.
Better Offloading for Exhausted crews
When your crew pulls up to a customer’s house, you don’t want to waste a bunch of time getting the battery unloaded.
If you’re dealing with trailer or box truck ramps, crew members have to stop other, high-value work to help each other get the battery safely down the steep incline.
When you choose an enclosed drop deck trailer your ground crew member simply uses a heavy-duty dolly or hand truck to wheel the battery down the 11° 74″ wide ramp at ground level, and then moves it across the customer’s driveway, up the sidewalk, and into place.
Why let your $80 an hour licensed electrician spend any of their time helping your ground guys wrestle heavy batteries down ramps?
Why risk that a crew member might slip on one of those ramps to generate an L&I claim? Why risk dropping your battery, both breaking the expensive backup battery and potentially damaging the customer’s driveway?
When you choose hydraulic drop deck trailers, you speed installs, make your customers happier, and lose fewer batteries to the harsh realities of gravity.
Enclosed, Insulated Protection
Lithium-ion batteries are touchy when it comes to temperature and moisture.
So sure, you could stuff them into a standard trailer or box truck. Both of those solutions will more or less keep the rain off.
But do you really want your $12,000 component to be “more or less ok” during transit?
When you choose an enclosed drop deck trailer from GoodMFG®, you get insulated protection. We build our trailers with patent-pending composite aluminum panels that sandwich insulating polystyrene foam between sheets of #5052 aluminum.
The result? Insulation that keeps interior temperatures cooler and steadier while your crews are out in the field, keeping your batteries from getting too hot or, during winter, too cold. Our engineers created our composite aluminum panels to defeat interior condensation too—because the one thing you don’t want to think about is whether “trailer rain” is complicating your heavy battery transport by shorting out those batteries before they ever get to the customer’s home.
You also get the security that comes with a sturdy, lockable trailer, and all the protection from the elements you’d normally get.
Key Takeaways
Here’s your TL;DR if your solar company is thinking about upgrading your solar transport solutions this year.
- Protect sensitive components. Enphase and EG4 units are fragile! Reduce the chances you’ll drop them or micro-fracture components by having to handle them too roughly just to get the trailer loaded or unloaded.
- Eliminate unstable liftgate hazards. Residential deliveries often require staging on steep driveways. Standard cantilevering liftgates become dangerous under these conditions.
- Optimize high-value labor. Don’t spend part of your lead electrician’s $80/hour salary on the business of wrestling heavy battery units when your ground guy could be doing it by himself.
- Keep ’em dry. Patent-pending insulated composite aluminum panels keep temperatures steady, keep condensation off your batteries, and protect them from the elements while you move from install to install.
Solutions for Solar
Is your solar company ready for a better solution for heavy battery transport?
- Call us right now at (360) 889-9789.
- Find a dealer near you.
- Click the green icon to the lower right to chat with Tow-Bot.
- Or contact us to send a message using the form below!
See also:
Moving Scissor Lifts with Good Trailers
Risk Mitigation on the Ramp: Seamless Loading & Unloading Solutions
The Top 4 Advantages of Trailers that Lower to the Ground
This resource was compiled by the GoodMFG® Product Team, drawing on 75 years of 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.
