water oak

[Ivey]

 Does anyone use water oak for trailor decking or dump truck side boards. I know Wh i TE
   oak would be the choice wood for my area, but its hard to find anymore. What about pignut hickory.. 
                          Ivey

[ellmoe]

   We saw water oak for decking. Customers seem to be satisfied.

Mark

[Bibbyman]

Does anyone use water oak for trailor decking or dump truck side boards. I know Wh i TE
   oak would be the choice wood for my area, but its hard to find anymore. What about pignut hickory.. 
                          Ivey

I'd think the bugs would attack pignut hickory real fast if it were not treated with something. 

[Tom]

The problem with water oak is that it rots on the trailer.  The water that condenses under the the deck rots it from the bottom up.  White Oak is best.  Either would work good for dump truck side boards.

I wouldn't use pignut hickory for anything outside and expect it to last long.  Fungus and rot get most of these in the South.


Now that I've said that, I have used them myself for intermediate solutions to my own decking problems.  The last water oak deck I put on my equipment trailer was to get the back-hoe to the machine shop.  It looked real good and worked fine for almost 6 months.

[DanG]

I gotta replace the deck on the $300 trailer.  The boards on it now were treated by a company in Tallahassee that closed down in 1978.  They have finally given up the fight.  Pressure treated pine is kinda hard to beat unless you're hauling tracked equipment.  Even then, you could deck with PT pine and add some oak runners to protect it from the tracks.

[mburrow]

this is my first post. I like to use white oak, here is a pic of my 1999 model trailer I just refloored, the treated pine that was on it was rotted out and unuseable in 2004.I also have a old bob truck that I made a white oak bed for in 81 or 82 and has been setting in dads field for about 20 years and it still has some solid boards and the runners are still solid. I have more pic's of the trailer in my gallery

[beenthere]

mburrow
Welcome to the forum. Good pics, well done.

[WDH]

Mburrow,

You posted a pic in your very first post.  A new standard has been set 8).

[DanG]

Hmmmph.  Yeah, he did do dat.  It took me 3 years, then Tom came over from J'ville and held my hand through the process. :  Welcome to the Forum, mburrow! 8)

I feel I need to add to my previous post.  The boards on my trailer are indeed that old, but they were "penta-treated".  That means they were treated with Penta-chlo(mumble mumble)nol.  Apparently that stuff held up better than the current stuff.  The bean counters won't let'em treat with anything that will last that long, any more.

[Ivey]

mburrow, good lookin trailor-- welcome to the forestry forum, the best place to be for good down to earth info....

Thanks fellows for the information, and advice.

  The wife and I have just sent out over 25 flyiers through the mail and fax. to try to target construction companies (you know dump trucks, and low-boys)  anyways while looking for logs I talked to the manager of a large mill
about 30 miles away.Told him what I wanted to do, he offered to sell me w/oak logs 2 sides for .45 b/f.. Then stopped at another place that had
water oak, and hickory for 25.00 ton. I know it's hard to say without seeing,but are these prices in line?  Thanks for the advice on what not to use where..
                          Ivey

[mburrow]

I been a member here for over a year now and been reading and just havent posted.
as of now I dont own a mill, but I was raised around one. I ran a edger for one of the bigger mills around here about 15 years ago, I have to go down to my friends mill and help him some (just cant stay away from a mill I think the sawdust gets into your blood) posting pic's here is a little different but I had remembered they had to be linked from the gallery then it wasent to hard to do.
as for using water oak or hickory I agree with Tom I wouldn't use either one on a trailer unless it was just get something home and that was all I had.