Horse Trailer Wrap-Up

My horse trailer is finished, registered, and road worthy. I've given it its maiden shakedown cruise carrying a one ton load and then did a complete re-inspection. Everything checks out so I'm good to go. Of course, my horses, even though they've been trailered extensively before, see this new trailer as an existential crisis so they have to be re-trained. Pain in the... A few pictures of it are shown below the jump.

My original estimate of the unladen trailer weight was around 3000 pounds. I took it to a scale to get unladen weight and tongue weight. The unladen weight was 3500 pounds with a tongue weight of 480 pounds. By design the tongue weight will only change a small amount (100 pounds in the loaded condition). I forgot the weight of the rubber mats for the ramps and inside the trailer which was about 500 pounds. Fortunately, I had some wiggle room in my design. My hitch and hitch connections are all rated to 7000 pounds and 700 pounds total weight and tongue weight respectively. The towing capacity of any one of our trucks is at least 6900 pounds. So, with the weight of the trailer (3500 pounds) and the weight of my horses (2300 pounds) my total laden weight will be just short of 6000 pounds. I can still add some weight in the trailer, and in the bed of the truck used, and be satisfactory.  

One of the things I try to do is purchase from small American based companies. Though much of our manufacturing has been sent overseas many things are still available that are made in the U.S. Some of the materials and parts are only made in China. For the axle set I used Johnson Trailer Parts out of Arizona which included free shipping to a commercial address (my local hardware store). They have highly competitive prices and they gave great service.

For a lot of miscellaneous parts I used e-trailer which carries just about anything trailer you might need. Other good trailer parts on-line retailers include Redneck Trailer Supplies, the Trailer Parts Superstore, and the Trailer Parts Outlet. For horse trailer specific parts the Horse Trailer Accessory Store was great.

For fabrication suppliers I used two different suppliers for many of the weld tabs, handles, gussets, and other small items I used. They were AA Manufacturing and Spring Creek Products. It was a fun build, and I thoroughly enjoyed doing it. Now it's time for "The Boys" and I to hit the road.