Is this safe?

Getting steel beams from work.  Borrowing an 12 foot trailer from work.  The beams are 16 feet long.  Each is gonna weigh about 500lbs

Was planning a wooden stand to do this with and have the weight over the tongue of the trailer.

How dumb is this?

It will be VERY difficult to keep that triangle from becoming not a triangle and having your beam come crashing down on whatever is in front.  

Setting it down and having it overhang as much as possible in the front is a better solution.  

Is delivery prohibitively expensive?  I've seen rollbacks used for this sort of thing.  

Do you need/want 16' beam or could you cut them before transport?  

How long is the trailer from the coupler to the back? How many beams are you getting?

A trailer with a 12' deck is frequently 14-16 feet long. You can probably haul 4-6 in the center of the trailer from right behind the coupler and not have an excessive amount of overhang. SC allows 36" as long as the load is flagged. 

Edit to say, I haul 21' door packages on a 14' trailer with out exceeding the overhang limits. 

Beams are in Tampa, going to the Fl-Ga border (more or less.)  Needs to be 16'ish

I could potentially take the tailgate off and slide the beam through the fence on the front of the trailer and let it hang off the back.  Small concern about keeping it in place like that.

In reply to Mr_Asa :

Do you have access to a welder where you are picking them up? Could you weld tabs to the beams to keep them from sliding?

In reply to Toyman! :

Very probably, yes.

Also, was likely gonna max out the trailer and grab 4 beams

How wide is the trailer? Can you make that same triangle but sideways without sticking past the fenders?

Is there enough weight capacity in the tow rig that you can put the beams flat on the trailer (sticking off the back) and add ballast to the front to bring it up to a proper weight balance?  If so, then that seems like the safest way to do it to me.

Also note that a trailer with a 12 foot deck has a 3-4 foot tongue up front.  If there's no fence at the front of the trailer, can you just put 2 feet of the beams out onto the tongue?  (edit:  Toyman covered this)

As Toyman suggested slide them up to the coupler and flag whatever hangs of the back.

Could you use a U-Haul car hauler and strap them flat on the runways? Trailer would take c.5200 lbs without difficulty, and if you remove the stops at the front, you'd have minimal overhang.

I believe in Florida you can overhang the back up to 48" if you hang flags on the end of the beams.

Log trucks do it every day around here.

One caution:  1,000 lbs. of spear sliding forward due to sudden deceleration.   Restraint is in order.

In reply to Purple Frog :

VERY well said!