JeffB

I know it never really happened unless you post pictures so I did bring my camera as Jackie said. I still need to download the pictures but I should be able to get to it tomorrow. I finished unloading the cooker at 3 in the morning and then had to wake up a few hours later in order to return the rental van followed by a full day my wife had already planned. I have felt better

Well Jackie, if something goes wrong I expect a piggy back ride to the hospital

Fetzervalve, thanks for the information. My plan is to use some strips of 1/2 inch ply to make "channels" that the wheels will fit in. I was going to make the "channels" 2 inches wide to make sure they have enough slop to hold the wheels along with any variation in ramp parallelism. My biggest worry is the "shrouds" on the feet getting hung up on the channels but I am pretty sure 1/2 ply should be thin enough to fit under. Validation of that would be appreciated though. The first foot or so on the ramp will not have a channel so I won't get hung up as the cooker first goes on. I will figure out wheel spacing when I get on site and lock the two legs of my ramp together at a distance determined by a trial run flat on the ground. Thanks again.

I am actually renting the van on Monday so I haven't worked out exactly where the tie down points are. That is something I will have to figure out "when I get there". You are correct in that if my tie down points are too close to the door the direction of my force will be wrong. My plan is to pull the cooker in through the rear hatch so I can drop/remove all the seats of the van and then have the largest number of possible tie down points. At the very least I can use the driver and passenger seats. That should put things far enough away from the ramp that the forces acting on the cooker are mostly straight.

Stripping it down is the plan. Once you pull the lid off and pull out all the innards the bottom is only 300 pounds. As for the pulley arrangement... one double pulley will be attached to the cooker itself, the second will be attached to a tie down point in the the van. So the rope will go from a second tie down point in the van -> cooker -> pulley in van -> cooker -> pulley in van and finally back out to me standing outside the door. I haven't done the calculations yet (my high school physics sadly left me years ago) but I would be surprised if anything more than 50 pounds of force is required to move the cooker up the ramp. Now where is my old physics book...

Thanks for the pictures. That actually helps validate something else I was concerned about. In regards to the grooves, I very well may be over-engineering but I am going to be doing the loading solo so I think it is probably best I over-engineer. The current plan is to rig up a couple double pulleys (if that doesn't work I have a winch to fall back on) and since I will be occupied with pulling on a rope, I want to minimize the amount of manipulation I do of the cooker itself. The hope is the grooves will encourage the cooker to move in the direction I want so I can simply stand to the side and pull on the rope.

I am building a ramp to load a 23" OTB into a van. The ramp is going to have grooves in it that the wheels will fit in to help guide the cooker up the ramp (i.e., so it won't roll off the side of the ramp). Unfortunately, I don't know the dimensions of the wheels so I am not sure how wide or how deep the grooves can/have to be. Would someone with a grill mind measuring the wheel at its widest point (below the feet "shroud" edge). As well, exactly how far is it from the ground to the bottom of the "shroud". I would hate to make the grooves too deep and have the cooker not be able to roll up the ramp at all. Thanks in advance.

Speaking of your book... I had my copy of Big Bob Gibson's BBQ Book show up last Friday and I actually read it cover to cover over the weekend. I have never done that before with a cooking book. I loved the background given for each recipe and of course the Gibson story was fascinating. With such fantastic story telling and great recipes it is no wonder you were invited back. Congratulations.