Hydraulic wheel dollies, anybody used them?

brilliant things, but you do need a very good floor surface.

there are larger and heavier duty types, metal wheels and rollers, not sure how well they will cope with small wheels though.

if theres a strong tall tyre, should be fine, most will give a minimum size I believe, as well as maximun, plus width.

I'll have a look for the other variants, I visited another company a few days ago who are borrowing a pair with twin rollers either side, they don't do as much moving as what I want/need to do and rated them well for what little use they've had out of them.



You could apply the same logic to all lifting gear, engine hoists, towbars, jacks, trestles etc, in reality many companies working on light aircraft use a mixture of commercial and homemade ground equipment, and I've never seen an insurance assessor show any concern over those. Once the word 'aircraft' has been added to something, the price does usually jump up significantly, but the quality remains the same. My view is that if a tool can last for years with heavy abuse in a commercial or industrial environment then gentle use in my working environment should be adequate. I also thought it may be of interest to anyone else whose considered or not encountered these before to ask the question of are they any good and worth the money?

I've scraped a few off runways and fields where wheels aren't even attached anymore, got the gear for those eventualities to hand . It's more of ease of moving inside, just on a larger scale than that of the average garage! It can take 3-4 hours to restack a hangar sometimes, and that time would be better spent working to earn money. What worries me is how durable the mechanism is to pull the sides together underneath the wheel, how long would they last in heavy use?

The alternative is just to weld up some 4-5mm steel plate into a very shallow dolly and have a pair of locking castor wheels so that I only need to pull the plane onto the locked dolly, secure it in place and move it about for the price of some quality castor wheels a large plate of steel....

we use a pair of non hydraulic ones in the barn, and they are great things when space for manouvering is tight

like these:


could be a cheaper option, but jacking up an airplane isnt easy i guess

I've got a set of four of those. One tip is drill a hole in the lowest part of the wheel well to allow any water etc out. I use them for all sorts of things such as engines and gearbox dollies with a piece of ply on the top. Mine have cast iron wheels and easily take the weight of a Range Rover.

Frighteningly expensive and a lower load rating than the automotive ones, ok for a large company with a big budget...



Some are easier than others, even to the point of just picking them up . My idea is quick and easy operation, no more than a few minutes setting up and going.