Video Transcript for The Power Behind Stillwell Hydraulic Jacks: Manufacturer Interview

Hello, neighbors. It's Brad here from etrailer, and today, I'm at NATM. And this convention brings a lot of the vendors that we have at etrailer to a convention where we have their booths and their products set up. I had a chance to catch up with quite a few of 'em, so let's take a look at their products a little bit up close and ask some of the questions to those vendors about their products. I'm here with Taylor from Stillwell, and Taylor, what is Stillwell Stillwell is a domestic manufacturer for the trailer industry. Our primary focus is hydraulics.

We've been doing that for nearly the last two decades. We have facilities in Minnesota and Texas and trying to bring as much manufacturing back to the US as we possibly can. Beautiful. So as far as hydraulic jacks, you guys have a few offerings here Yep. What do we have So this one here is our Vaquero.

It's a 10,000 pound lift capacity self-contained unit for primarily horse trailers. We've seen it in a wide variety of applications from the vacuums on Ditch Witch, generator trailers in the oil fields and the tilt trailers that a lot of these customers use in just your equipment and utility space. Brad So tons of different applications. Yep, if we keep moving down the line, we have two different just height options for our Atlas jack. This one is the 20 inch used on a lot of low profile dump trailers.

Super easy tie-in application using some of our proprietary valving. And then we also have a 26 inch option, which is better for your gooseneck trailers. Gives you a little bit more of that extra pipe and travel for those lifted trucks. You know, our industry, they like them a little bit taller. Absolutely.

Now, if someone wanted to add this to one of their trailers, what would they need to do to make sure that your application fits theirs So typically, one of the things we'll do is we'll walk through the current installation process that the manufacturer has, so whether it's bracketed on, welded on, and that'll start to drive the conversation to finding the right solution for you. So, we work with a lot of the OEM manufacturers, so we try to make it as easy as possible with bolt-on applications, plug and play as much as possible. Brad You bet. As far as hydraulics go, we manufacture a wide variety of valving to tie the jacks into the system. So, this one being our dual selector valve is designed to use the existing hydraulics on the dump trailer and allows you with just a flip of this switch to go back and forth between the dump bed and then a hydraulic jack in the front. The original cast iron screw valves, the number one complaint is that they leak, but it's how they work. Like, that's how they're designed, leak. So we came out with a zero leak. It doesn't hydro lock the way that a valve typically would and that's what sets us apart because we we inchesre able to solve both problems. So, it's easy to use. So all the pressure that it takes for me to turn this right now is all it takes under load, versus with the screw valves, that design, because otherwise they'd freeze up and you wouldn't be able to actuate them. So that's where we designed this, but then we provide that to everything about a trailer. So this is our 3-way ball valve. It's designed for the tilt trailers and it's similar application. It's, you lock the system, the trailer's not gonna move. You open it up and now you're able to actually typically grab the tilt. Moving down to one of the other ones, so The Cube here is what is used predominantly on the gooseneck trailers and it's dual flow dividers, dual PO checks so it locks the load in place, makes sure that the flow is even going out and coming back in. And then sure that those jets move in tandem with each other with little to no delay. We also manufacture all of our hydraulic lines out of our facility in Texas, so everything is cut and print, made to order. These have four to one safety factors, so they are designed with safety in mind and again, we adhere to all of your standard SAE qualifications for it. And they're designed to be an easy plug and play with all of our other hydraulic systems. We've standardized all of our adapters to be the same size between the jacks, the cylinders, the valving, so that it's as simple as possible for the end user. For the most part, everything can be completely installed with one wrench. Brad That's awesome. Taylor That's the goal. Now, hydraulic lines, obviously, you don't want damage to those. It's gonna cause a whole lot of issues and a lot of that is setting up the trailer to where you're not gonna have road hazards causing any issue. And so, managing those lines is important, and you guys have a solution for that. Yeah, yeah. So because we've worked with so many different manufacturers and they all weld rings to the trailer, you have to run every hose through, we decided we need to make that easier for one, the manufacturer, and two, for the service after the fact. And so, we came out with these hose clamps here. They're designed to be a peel and stick application. That way, you're not having to run the hose lines through a ring underneath the trailer every three, four feet. They're really easy design. They use VHB tape. So you can just peel the backing off here, and then when you're ready to run your lines, you've got everything figured out. It just fits in there nicely and clamps shut. Yeah, that tape is no joke, too. So if you're worried about an adhesive not holding onto the frame of your trailer, I'm here to tell you it will. It absolutely will. It's super strong. Yep, and everything we do has got a glass field nylon, so it's hardened. It's designed for the road. It's gonna hold up. You could drive over these with your truck and nothing's gonna happen to them. Yeah. That's the way that it's all designed and we put a lot of thought and engineering into the actual use of the product and so we designed it around the trailer. We like to say around here that we don't wanna build the trailer around the products available. We're gonna build the products to build the best trailer. Flip the script on it. I love it. Yeah, awesome. Well thank you, Taylor, for taking the time to break down Stillwell and some of their offerings. Look like fantastic products. Yeah. And I'm excited that etrailer has them. So thanks again, Taylor. Yeah. Appreciate it. Appreciate it, Brad. Thank you so much.