8 Wheel Tipper for Sale - Popular Search (173)

Why are they called 8-Wheelers?

A car has two axles with a wheel on each corner (4).  If it was ether a rear wheel drive or front wheel drive, (not 4WD) in truck talk, this would be a ‘4×2’ – that is to say 4 points of contact with the ground, two of which provide the drive.  It is now easy to see where the term 4×4 comes from (4 points of contact, 4 wheels driven).

However, we are interested in an 8-wheeler (or 8-legger), so, a truck with 4 axles has 8 points of contact (for simplicity – I will come back to the 12 wheels later).  As many of these tipping trucks work in construction sites, they need to have extra traction, so they drive through both sets of rear axles.  This means that there are four driven points of contact.  This gives us an 8×4.

There are other options – for truck never venturing onto a building site it is possible to have an 8×2 and very specialist trucks can be 8×6 or even 8×8!

So why the 12 wheels?  Well, the two rear, drive axles always have double wheels and tyres fitted.  So, there are 8 on the rear and four on the front of a typical eight wheeler!

These trucks are allowed to weigh in at 32,000 kgs gross vehicle weight (including truck, body and load). This compares to 44,000 kgs for an articulated tractor unit (with 3 axles) towing a 3-axle trailer.