Three years ago, I started building an off-grid home at Land between the Lakes in Dover, TN. Part of the construction is a Noresco 3,000 gallon potable water tank. It is big. The tank I bought is 107 inches high and 95 inches in diameter. There are only a few places in the USA that manufacture these and luckily one of them was only 371 miles away. I had the option to have NTO, the company I purchased the tank from, to have it shipped to me. The shipping cost was ridiculous. The tank cost me $1,156 and shipping would have been $895, almost as much as the cost of the tank.
Size
The first thing to consider is the size of the tank. I wanted a larger tank but 5,000 gallons is the largest you can transport on roads without permits as it larger than 5,000 gallons exceeds the width of the lane.
Weight
These tanks do not weight a lot. The tank I purchased weighs around 400 pounds without water in it. Once it was filled up, it weighed in at 26,200 pounds as water is roughly 8.8 pounds per gallon.
Trailer
Luckily, my neighbor has a trailer that was sufficient to haul the tank. He loaned me an 8' x 12' trailer. It was more than sufficient.
Tie Downs
You can use the standard ratchet tie downs. I used four. It required two put together to get all the way over the tank while two straps held it down. These worked out just fine.
Loading
The manufacturer will load the tank on for you with a special forklift they have. The tank moves very easily as one person can push it around. One thing that scared me when it was being loaded was when the forklift driver pushed the tank over on its side. The tank is so sturdy that it will not be damaged as this is done. There will be a few scratch marks at most.
Here is a pic of it after it was loaded and I was getting ready to head back to LBL:
You may be wondering about me using a Jeep Wrangler to transport such a huge tank. Although it is big, it is lightweight and no problem for the Jeep to pull.
Driving
When I first started driving, I was very cautious about pulling such a big load. It ended up being a straightforward transport. The Jeep is a 6 cylinder, so power wasn't an issue. I was concerned about Mont Eagle and the sharp winds that can occur there and I had no problems going up and coming down.
I had to make one stop for gasoline and took a picture of the entire trailer, Jeep, and tank. This shows just how big the tank really is.
Unloading
Unloading was easier than I had anticipated. No doubt it was scary, but it was not a huge task as I thought it would be. The worst part was pushing it off of the trailer so it would land on the bottom. I backed the trailer up between two trees and then tied ropes from each tree to both sides of the tank on the trailer. This allowed us to push the tank over the side of the trailer without the risk of it rolling down the hill. It was scary doing this, but the tank landed on its bottom. The next thing was moving the tank onto the concrete pad I had built for it. We ended up using 2x4s which we pushed the tank onto so that it would easily goto onto the concrete pad. Once it was on the pad, moving it around was no problem.
This is the tank in its final resting place.
Conclusion
It was not nearly as difficult to transport as I thought. I was apprehensive of the sheer size of the tank coupled with its relatively lightweight. I thought it might blow around on the road, but it did not. With a little planning and strategy, you should not have much trouble doing this yourself. Before buying a large tank, make sure you ask for the design specs so you know if you can transport it and what you will need.
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