How To Choose The Right Tipper Or Tray Body For Your Truck

If you regularly carry loose bulk material — grain, gravel, fertiliser, sand, soil — and you need to tip it on-site without additional equipment, you need a tipper. The hydraulic hoist and subframe that lift the body are what the machine is for, and trying to work around their absence with shovels or augurs adds time and labour to every unload.

If you carry mixed loads — fencing materials, machinery, palletised goods, livestock panels, hay bales — and you unload with a forklift, crane, manual labour or by driving the truck up to a loading dock, a flat tray is almost certainly the better choice. A tipper hoist and subframe add weight and complexity you do not need, reduce your usable payload, and create access and loading constraints a flat floor does not have. The mistake most operators make is buying a tipper because they occasionally tip, when a tray with good drop sides would have served them better for the other ninety percent of their work.

A tipper body is built around a hydraulic hoist and a reinforced subframe that transfers the tipping load back to the chassis. The floor is typically a heavier gauge steel because it takes the full load on tip, and the headboard needs to handle both forward weight transfer and the stress of the load sliding against it. The sides are usually fixed or semi-fixed, and the tailgate is hinged to open as the body rises. Access for side loading is limited compared to a flat tray.



The hoist, subframe and heavier construction all add to the unladen weight of the body — relevant if your payload rating is a constraint.

A tray body is a flat load floor supported by a cross-member subframe, with a headboard and drop sides that can fold down for side access. There is no hoist — what you load, you unload by other means. The construction can be lighter for equivalent load capacity because there is no tipping stress cycle, which means either a lower unladen weight or the same weight with heavier gauge steel for greater durability.

Trays are more versatile for mixed loads and offer better access for machinery, pallets and anything that needs to be slid on or driven up a ramp. They are also simpler to repair and modify — removing a drop side or adding a toolbox does not involve working around a hoist mechanism.

The decision is driven by three things: what you carry most often, how you unload, and what roads and sites you are operating on.

A mixed-use farm truck that carries fencing gear, stock feed, tools and the occasional pallet is typically better served by a flat tray with strong drop sides and a headboard that can take the odd impact. If the same truck also carts bulk grain or fertiliser, that is when the tipper argument becomes real — but if the bulk runs are infrequent, a tipper body imposes its constraints every day in exchange for convenience on a handful of jobs.

Unsealed rural roads and paddock access in Central West NSW are hard on body mounts regardless of configuration. A tray built with properly gusseted mounts and press-braked crossmembers handles corrugations and soft ground better than one adapted from a lighter-duty body, because the stress concentration points are reinforced from the start.

Tipping loads of aggregate, spoil, concrete and fill favour a tipper. If the truck is on a civil site full time and the unload is always a tip, the configuration question is settled. Where it gets more complex is on mixed civil and transport work — cartage jobs that need the truck to carry equipment one day and tip material the next. Some operators run a tipper for this reason; others keep two bodies and swap between them depending on the contract.

The most common scenario our workshop sees is an owner-driver who wants maximum versatility from a single body. For most, a robust flat tray with full-length drop sides, a heavy-gauge floor and a good headboard gives more usable flexibility than a tipper that restricts access and loading options. As we covered in our guide to the advantages of custom trailers for rural businesses, purpose-built steel consistently outlasts mass-produced alternatives in paddock conditions — the same principle applies to truck bodies.

For operators in Dubbo and Central West NSW, the case for a custom build is more straightforward than in metropolitan areas, for a few practical reasons.

An off-the-shelf body is built to common chassis dimensions and adapted to your specific truck. That adaptation involves shims, brackets and sometimes cuts and welds that introduce stress points the original fabricator did not design for. A custom truck tray is cut and folded to your chassis dimensions from the start — the headboard, crossmembers and floor are proportioned for your specific wheelbase, cab-to-axle measurement and chassis rail profile. Because every body is built in-house, custom steel fabrication in Dubbo means your tray is cut and folded to your chassis rather than shimmed to fit.

When you specify a custom build, you determine the steel gauge, the drop side configuration, the toolbox placement, the headboard height, the LED tray lighting layout and any additional features — ramp brackets, ladder racks, water tank mounts — based on how you actually use the truck. An off-the-shelf body makes those decisions for you, based on what sells to the broadest market.

A body built locally means modifications and repairs are handled by the same workshop that knows the original construction. For an operator in the Central West, this is a practical advantage over an interstate-supplied body where warranty claims require freight and delays. When the truck goes down on a job, local repair access matters.

For operators across the Central West, a tipper tray Dubbo built to spec is far more practical than adapting a generic body to your fleet. As truck tray builders Dubbo operators have relied on for over 30 years, we understand the difference between a steel truck tray built for local conditions and a custom tray body NSW fabricators outside the region would produce without that same on-the-ground knowledge — including tipper body Dubbo and district operators need to handle unsealed roads and heavy agricultural loads.

The brief answer is that cost and build time are driven by the scope of the build, not by a standard rate. The main variables are:

A heavier-gauge floor and sides cost more in material and take more time to cut, fold and weld. The right gauge for your application depends on your typical payload and the type of wear the floor will take — a grain tipper has different floor requirements to a tray that mostly carries steel and machinery.

A tipper body involves a hydraulic hoist and a purpose-built subframe that carries the tipping load. This is a more complex build than a flat tray and involves more components, more engineering around the hoist mounting and more work to integrate with your chassis. A flat tray with drop sides is a simpler scope for the same external dimensions.

Each addition — side toolboxes, underbody toolboxes, ladder racks, ramp hooks, water tank mounts, electrical for LED tray lighting — adds to both material cost and build time. Specifying these at the start of the build rather than adding them later is almost always more efficient.

If the chassis requires preparation before the body goes on — removing an old body, modifying the chassis rails, addressing rust or damage — that work adds to the total scope.



The right way to get an accurate figure is to bring the truck in, walk through your requirements in person, and get a written quote based on the actual chassis and your specific configuration.

Before a body goes into production, it is worth working through a short checklist with the fabricator:

• Dimensions confirmed against the actual chassis — not a model specification, but your specific truck's cab-to-axle, chassis width and rail profile
• Steel gauge specified in writing — floor, sides and headboard, and the reasoning for each
• Hoist specification for tippers — including subframe design, cylinder position and integration with your chassis rating
• Electrical spec — LED tray lighting, switches, wiring routing and connection point to the truck's electrical system
• Drop side configuration — full-length, split, pin-off or fixed, and hinge and latch type
• Finishing — prime and paint, colour, and whether the chassis contact points are protected against galvanic corrosion
• Sign-off drawing or sketch — even a simple layout drawing confirming the agreed dimensions, fitments and configuration protects both parties

The time to clarify any of these is before the steel is cut, not after.