In preparation for the 2018 season, my team has designed two massive mobile workstations (pit carts) that replace all of the existing toolchests in our competition pit and most of the workbenches in our current workshop. However, we take a coach bus to Houston every year, and the clearance to the storage area under is 33". The current pit is designed for standing work, so it’s much higher than 33", and a top section that lowers down for transit in our small trailers add more to that number. Basically, cutting down the size of the pit’s height is a non-option because we lose our tote storage and the bench will be very short. What are some ways that most teams transport large workbenches, pit carts, superpits, etc. to Houston or St. Louis ?
Most teams that have those huge carts and the like for their pit have a team trailer. You can see these in the parking lot of any event you go to.
103 got a trailer with some rollover funds we had about 5 years ago now and it has been great. This is almost the same as our trailer. We take a large toolbox, our entire pit, cart, and robot as well as any totes for the stands (we love our palm-palms) that we need.
Even with all of this in there we usually have a decent amount of extra room. We have coordinated with other teams in the past to share our trailer for champs, and if you find a team around you with a trailer you may be able to work something out. I would not rely on this though.
For a commercial transport bus lower storage, couldn’t you just lay these down on their backs rather than upright. You could certainly pack the contents appropriately beforehand, and even have some plywood or cardboard to protect the cases during transport.
If you really want to fit it under a bus, you might try redesigning the units so that they separate/stack/nest at some point. If you only need a few inches, the easiest place to do this might be to have a dolly frame underneath the toolchest part.
The large FIRST totes are 27" long, so a shelf that can store these only needs to be 27" deep, meaning it can probably be laid down under the bus. We use pre-fab 24" deep shelves and hang ours over an inch or two. We don’t move ours, but they can be broken down into a small volume and put back up in a short period of time with only a mallet.
If you still want to fit them under a coach bus instead of a trailer, look at the depth! My team’s old battery cart was initially designed to fit underneath a coach bus. It was a great working height, and had some runners on the back. Just wheel it up to the bus, tip it onto it’s back, and it slid right in. We’ve since gotten a trailer, which really does work much better for transporting everything, as you don’t need to worry about tools and other items shifting from tipping things over.
Fitting it under the bus would require cutting 10" off the height and taking off the entire top section which weighs quite a lot. The current system simply lifts and lowers the top section to stow on our current trailer. The current design we have is very similar to 1619s pit from 2016 who generously helped us with some problems we were having.
My point was that rather than taking off the top 10", take off the **bottom **10". Roll the whole thing up to the bus, lift off the top 23" and slide it in, then follow with the “dolly” and perhaps the bottom shelf/drawer. Unload in reverse.
Assuming you’re talking about this pit design, the place to separate it would be above the tote storage, below all the small drawers. It should also be possible (though far from easy) to make the tote storage a bit wider and deeper and drop the drawer section inside of the tote area to put on the bus. (Of course, you’d have to remove the totes!)
Without some truly breathtaking cantilevers and counterbalance, I don’t see any way to get the top cabinets under the bus in a vertical orientation without removing them from the rest of the cart, and from the standards that support them. If you do the “drop inside” I suggested above, you should probably mount the standards to the tote section, not the drawer section!!
Alternately, it looks like all of your parts bins are removable from the drawers, in which case you remove the bins and totes, lay the cart down, and pack the drawers and totes separately or (if they fit) inside the tote area. Even so, leaving those top cabinets on will be an issue, especially if you don’t empty them.
To answer your question, your options are limited to bringing a trailer which is the most popular option, modifying your design to fit under a bus, or renting a large box truck with a lift gate. Since a box truck can fit more, you could potentially split that cost among several local teams and haul additional items.
Outside of those three options there really aren’t any other methods of transporting large items. Teams with mobile workbenches have the additional hassle of needing to arrange transportation for those items in trailers which does mean driving.
If you do modify your design to fit under a bus, be mindful of the weight and think of safety with tipping anything on it’s side.