Buy a trailer (instead of a pickup truck)
 

I have found that owning a trailer has some advantages over a large pickup.
Sometimes your line of work calls for a giant 4wd pickup but thats not the case for most of us.

This is a thread for anyone thinking about getting a large pickup truck as a second vehicle or replacing their smaller pickup with a bigger, much lower MPG pickup when adding a trailer would do.

Check your vehicles tow rating here:
Tow Ratings Database - Tow Vehicle Ratings | Camping Life Magazine
You may be surprized. My camaro can tow up to 1,000lb and our lincoln town car (crown vics too) can tow 2,000lb.

And here:
http://www.automobilemag.com/feature...s/viewall.html

Used trailers can be cheap, they are cheap to register, most states don't require insurance or inspections unless your trailer has brakes, no one ever asks to barrow your trailer and as long as you don't take it to work every day, no one askes you to help them move with your trailer.
I have noticed when you have a pickup it seems every one wants you to help them move something.

So buy a used trailer, you wont lose any money unless you completely destroy it. If you scratch or dent the trailer, who cares.

I bought my hinged fold up "bolt together northern tool trailer" for $360. That may not sound like a good deal but It came with a full 4ft x 8ft deck made of 5/16'' aluminum dimond plate that alone must have cost the guy who built it $400 or $500, it also has a northern tool trapazoid shaped aluminum dimond plate tool box, $200, aluminium dimond plate fenders ($50) and LED tail lights ($50).
It gave my enclosed suburban more open top pickup truck abilities.

To register my trailer in the state of Maine for 2 years it only cost me $21.

You may need to mod.
My trailer was only rated to carry about 500 to 700lb. I knew I was going to need a lot more.
When I bought the trailer in 2009 it had cheap little 8 inch rim load range B tires good for about 440lb each, springs good for around 500lb each and a C chanel axle that looked real sketchy just holding up the weight of the empty trailer.
EDIT: I tore apart the A-frame on my trailer to convert the last little bit of bolt together construction to weld together construction, when I pulled off one of the leveling jacks I found the original name plate. Says it rated for 1180lb. I removed the name plate since original manufacturer data no longer applies.

My friend and I went in 50/50 on buying 12'' rim load range C tires that are rated for 990lb each, 1,000lb each springs and a 1,800lb axle.
I think it all cost about $180.
He would use it to haul wood for his girl friend with his tacoma when ever he wanted, it has carried almost a half cord of wet black cherry wood weighing up wards of a ton, no problem.
Also the trailer is at least foot lower than the bed of an older pickup and about 2 feet lower than some of these newer pickup I see riding around, a big help if you move a lot of weight around.

I let my friend use it to get fire wood with his truck and he broke a tail light, I up graded the tail lights to better LED units with reverse lights for $60.
They are easy to repair.

Trailers are fully rebuildable too.
Here last week I tore my trailer apart to convert it from bolt together to solid fully welded construction. The back half of the trailer was starting to sag. I took that as an indication it was time to rebuild it. Turns out the frame was really rusted, almost rusted through in a few spots and the way it was designed it was really only held together with 8 bolts, if 2 or 4 of those bolts failed the trailer would have fell apart. It was a lot more work then I thought it would be. Now its held together with 2 pounds of flux core and solid core welding wire and many feet of welded seams. I also wore out a 7 inch grinding wheel and a week of hard work its just about back together, is now around 10 inchs longer, the axle sits about 4 inchs further back and is much more solid than before.
I might even add a hitch to the back of it before I put it all the way back together.
EDIT: I did add a hitch to the back of my trailer, $30 got me a reese hitch that was laying on the ground at the junk yard. As of now I put my hitch caddy back there. I could pull a second trailer if I wanted to, since I installed a flat 4 connector at the back of my trailer.

So trailers are:
Cheap to buy.
Cost almost nothing to register
No inspection.
Very low to the ground.
Cheap to mod.
Cheap to repair.
Fully rebuildable.

Must see NHTSA pdf:
http://www.nhtsa.gov/cars/problems/E...ing/Towing.pdf

The new standard J2807.
http://www.tundraheadquarters.com/bl...ngs-explained/

2017 Edit:
When using a full size car to tow on the highway I highly recommend keeping the gross trailer weight under 800lb regardless of the vehicle rating with out trailer brakes.
On a smaller car even less.

Picked up a cheap little utility trailer on CL a few years back for 50 bucks. Haven't used it yet as I bought a Ford Ranger not long after. But the Ranger has its issues and may not be around that long in which case I will likely register the trailer and put a hitch on the wife's Sonata.

When my parents moved up north to retire, they asked me to get them some stupidly big crew cab 4x4, so they could "move around dirt for the garden, etc". I told them two things - 1. get a cheapo utility trailer to tow behind their S10 style Jimmy 4x4, and 2. trailers are lower to the ground, and easier to load. Point 2 has been the biggest thing they like about the trailer, though I like point 1 in that they already had a decent 4x4 that was paid for, and for the $600 they paid for the trailer, and the 3 times a year they actually use it, it has saved them a pile of cash in both truck payments, and fuel costs.

Trailers can be more cost-effective than repairing a damaged pickup bed :D

Nobody seems to care if a trailer gets ugly...

I am a convert
 

I bought a second hand trailer 15 years ago, don't know how I ever managed without one for so long. It is 4 x 6 galvanized steel, I had to replace the floor at one point with 3/4 inch ply and I built a cage for it so I can haul green waste. It has thirteen inch wheels. I have used it a lot over the years and it has paid for itself many times, without a doubt best 200 dollars I ever spent. The only issue is having a space to park them but now a days they make ones you can hang on walls.

I was really torn between getting a trailer and just using my 97 Ranger as is. At better than 31 MPG, unless I am hauling a half yard of rock or something like that, I can just use the Ranger. If I need to haul anything else I just borrow my youngest brothers truck and 10k GVW dual axle hydraulic dump trailer he uses for doing roofs and removing other construction debris.
Haven't had to borrow it in many years, but if I did I would at least fill his tank.

regards
Mech

We have a sonata too, cant find a published tow rating (might be in the owners manual. Keep it under 1000lb.

A lot of cars today don't have towing capacities at all because the manufacturers don't want the liability of someone trying to overload their Hyundai Elantra, for example, or they want to sell you a F350 instead of a Ford Fusion to pull your lawn mower around once a month.

Check on E-Trailer - they sell hitches for anything!

I don't know why people are so quick to buy a huge expensive vehicle they really wont need when a trailer will work.

Even my dads 1991 ford escort had a tow rating, it was pathetic, like 500lb and they did not recomened towing any amount of weight more than 50 miles if you had the auto transmission.

Ebay has sellers with hitches for almost everything too. Camaro, sonata, P/T crusier.

Yesss.

Good thread idea. Folks need to know that their car/trucklet can do actual work (and they may be in circumstances that force it).

One can also see what U-Haul allows (interactive site). They have liabiity concerns weighted against profit. And their trailer designs ought to be studied for closer-to-innate understanding of what works best over the decades.

FWIW, "tow ratings" are usually too low for the majority of vehicles. If they are well set-up they can easily do the job. They also have little to do with reality (as auto manufacturers rig the game towards super high profit pickups).

A Crown Vic, for example, is easily capable of a 5k trailer. Same for minivans "rated" at 3500-lbs; they can tow a large aerodynamic trailer easily twice that weight (given hitch rigging that keeps the front axle planted).

FWIW, in this kind of discussion, I'd rather have an open trailer narrow/long over wide/short (for a given square foot trailer floor comparison). It is much easier to tow a trailer close to, or inside of, the tow vehicle width dimension.

Tandem axle, too, once the length is to a certain point. Trailer brakes, always, once trailer capacity is over 1k.

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The 4.6L found in the crown vic will give plenty of pulling power.
Only thing I would be worried about when towing a good bit of weight with a crown vic is stopping.

I call a car towing a huge trailer a european F-150. I saw that a lot in germany.

My buddy with the tacoma found that his 4cyl can only tow 3,500lb he has the same brakes, radiator, transmission, clutch as the V6 tacoma that can tow 6k the only real difference besides engine size is he doesn't have the e-locker in the rear diff.
His problem is he doesnt have the power.

When you add trailer brakes in Virginia at least you have to get your trailer inspected and it makes the ownership process cost more (go from $20-$30 every 2 years to $60) or $70), but over all still only a tiny fraction the price of a huge pickup.

Depends on what you need. If you need to haul loads of stuff on paved roads, a car-towed trailer works fine. If you need to go on rough dirt, it's not so fine.

Then there's the fact that if I tow a trailer behind the pickup, I can haul twice as much per trip :-)

PS: And at $2700 (minus the $1100 I got for the older pickup), my '88 Toyota hardly qualifies as expensive, and is huge only in comparison with my Insight. Though oddly enough, I can haul more with it (both weight & volume) than my friends can with their newish F-250 yuppie pickup.

Anyone else remember the Dodge Dakota R/T buyback in the early 2000s? Dodge sold them with an inaccurate tow rating, and after a few people got into accidents while towing trailers that should have been fine to tow with the truck, Chrysler decided it would be easier to offer to buy them all back than to deal with lawsuits. So I have no doubt that today it's just a lot less hassle for manufacturers not to publish any towing specs at all, that way they have an easy way out if someone gets hurt while using their Fusion to tow a boat trailer etc.

it is also a cultural thing
 

when I first moved to NZ 15 yeasrs ago, I was surprised at how many people owned trailers, and how inexpensive and handy they were. One day while sitting along the side of the road on the way into town I started counting vehicles with and without trailer hitches, it was about even( not scientific and don't hold me to it but I lasted at least 1/2 an hour) and on every conceivable type of car, most people use them for light work like going to the dump or green waste. I find it particularly handy to pick up garden stuff like bags of horse **** an easy hose down if you scratch the bottom no one cares. By the way I like my trailer to look pretty, nothing looks better then a trailer with mag wheels!!!!espescially if they match the tow vehicle... :thumbup:

Thats what my friend does with his tacoma and my trailer. The smallish toyota bed plus a 4'x8' trailer with 2 foot tall wood sides with a tarp and cargo straps can hold a lot more than any big pickup by its self.

I picked up a classIII hitch off the ground at the junk yard for $25 since they didn't have to pull it.
Will add this to the back of my trailer.

Are you trying to build a train?:D

If the trailer is only used for lighter jobs, such as hauling motorcycles, it's OK. But when it sees some harder jobs that would impose a higher risk to get scratches and other minor damages to the trailer, sticking with the pressed-sheetmetal wheels is still a good option. BTW some good wheels to be used in trailers are the 13" ones out of an Opel Ascona C/Vauxhall Cavalier/early Chevrolet Cavalier/Holden Camira, they're extremely strong for their size...

The main use will be to add my home made resse caddy to the back of a trailer for an additional few square feet of deck space. I made it back in 2007 to carry a few fuel tanks and it hasn't seen much action since I got the trailer.

I will add a flat 4 connector to the back of my trailer, just incase I pull a second trailer.

My 5x8 trailer is bigger than a pickup bed, and at a much nicer height. What's more fun than getting over 30 mpg with an LGT? Hauling a yard and a half of dirt with it and shoveling it out without any climbing!

I'd be leery of mounting something off the back of it, though. The camper people have looked at doing hitch mounted bike racks off the back of their smaller campers and frown on it- the rear bumper of a small trailer gets tossed around a lot more than the rear bumper of the tow vehicle, so the weight hanging off the back gets whipped around even more. A tongue mount for the caddy is a better move. Slapping another trailer behind it would be awesome, though!

The reese hitch caddy would only be used for those light high volume items.
At the very least the reese hitch and flat 4 connector could be used to hold a 3rd brake light.

Saw this Brazilian Chevrolet Celta (basically a rebodied Opel Corsa B) today.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-V-SOvTbCsR...que+aberto.jpg
Even with a 60cu.in. 4-banger it was bolted to a small trailer, which might be able to handle 1000lbs. with an empty weight around 500lbs. Seems like even the folks with Metro-sized cars eventually wouldn't need a truck :D

The metro-trailer combo can move a couch, washing machine, queen size bed, most home improvement jobs and stuff like that no problem.
I don't think it will hold up to land scaping or roofing work very well.

don't think it will hold up to landscaping or roofing work very well

That's where paying for delivery / removal makes sense.

The higher the value of the payload, the more sense it makes to transport it yourself (would be one way of looking at it). Hauling gravel, dirt or a roof tear-off doesn't. Plus where one has to go to obtain or dispose of that kind of load tends to be unpaved, and rough.

My pickup, like most cars, is optimized for on-road. The threatened loss of a $300 tire "pays" for someone else to haul some loads, trailer or no.

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I dumped the last roof I did for about $70.
That was mostly to get rid of 16 sheets of water damaged plywood that came off the roof.
I was able to dispose of the normal tear off material for free.

It can actually work OK even for roofing or even landscaping, unless you'd use it to do it in a mansion or a farm :thumbup:

The point is to keep the trailer for the convenience/cost-savings of high value loads.

Anyone claiming that some of these little trailers are up to landscaping or roof tear-offs seems not to have done them. Jobs where the estimates are by the cubic yard. That would be with any single-family non-attached house.

Does U-Haul rent dump trailers? No. Do they rent large open trailers? No? Why, because the uses to which they are put tear the hell out of them.

In the world of big trucks, gravel-hauling, rock-hauling, etc is considered bottom-feeder. No money. Tears hell out of the equipment; tractors on their very last legs, etc.

Rent the HD trucklet for the container gardening delivery (bags), and hire a dumpster for roof tear-off.

This is only about convenience . . dollar savings against delivery is not plotted against true cost of ownership. The payload convenience of a pickup is high, and while the price with car and suitable trailer is better, it is far from free (as most folks will not consider the maintenance costs of their vehicle are now far higher. Overheat that trans fluid once and elect not to change it . . . . etc)

Car + trailer is a better solution over a pickup, but it is still within a limited range.

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In hampton virginia back in 2007 I rented a dumpster for the shed I tore down. They charged me $280 in 2007, had I known that I would have just burned it in a barrel over the course of several weeks. This is after they charge me about $90 every 2 months for "waste disposal". Some time between 2007 and now, Waste Management took over the dump and things got a lot more expensive so I didn't even want to know how much a dumpster costs now. Most cities will give you 1 free trip to the dump, per address per year, nope, not the city of hampton.
I replaced the roof there may of last year. Plan was to dispose of the shingles in my trash can and the neighbors trash can (the house was vacant and they had 2 trash cans for some reason) and in the trash cans accost the street with people I am friends with. I got to see a one arm bandit style trash truck try and lift several 400+ pound trash cans. For once I didn't feel ripped off paying $40-$50 a month for waste.
I did not plan on having to tear off 10 to 20 sheets of water damaged ply wood and several rafters, resulting in a $70 trip to the dump to drop off one trailer full of ply wood, had I known they were going to charge any where near $70 we would have explored other options such as a burn barrel. I'm from Maine and use to a trip to the dump costing no more than $20.

At least for me, the point to keep a trailer is to haul stuff that I wouldn't want to put inside a car or in the back of a truck to not damage it. Regarding trailers, I don't really care for beauty, as long as they remain functional.

A good trailer is perfectly up to that job - even the small ones - you'll just need to shuttle back & forth a couple more times in order not to overload it.
For the average Joe, landscaping his garden or tearing down the roof wouldn't be a frequent occurrence.

Plenty of landscaping companies here use trailers.
Often the heavier, twin or triple axle versions, but some use single axle trailers up to about 3000 lbs.
They can go where larger trailers (and tow vehicles) can't.

U-haul is not the be-all, end-all of rental corporations.
We can easily rent that kind of trailer over here.

So is the hefty price tag for this usually infrequently used convenience.

If people actually thought about it, they'd see the daily inconvenience of pick-ups for all but the very infrequent , very occasional heavylifting.

I plan to have a light trailer for my upcoming errrr ... VW up!

The tiny up! is 2000 lbs. curbside. 1L engine.
Yet it can tow just over 1500 lbs (braked) !
VW doesn't approve of towing with the up, but there are EU-approved hitches that permit towing, and being EU-approved, they can be added to the car regardless of VW's intentions or objections.

Oil pan: really great thread/post! Completely fits the ecomodding approach.

Flying Kurmaster: I too got a trailer a few years ago and, like you, don't know how I managed so long without one.

Mine was a freebie, and is super-light-duty, weighing in at just ~160 lbs "empty". It was custom made (probably home-built) to carry a small, ~150 lbs sailboat. It'll carry maybe 300 lbs before the tires rub the fenders. (Ask me how I know this.)


http://forkenswift.com/album/21-fs-trailer-brush.jpg

I've made innumerable runs taking brush to the city compost yard because my trees keep falling apart/down. :D

http://forkenswift.com/album/21-fork...ed-trailer.jpg

Moving a couple of knocked-down tin garden sheds.

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1285461394

What summer looks like.

how do you know it will carry 300lbs before fenders rub????:D

ps.... take the fenders off!!! or have them on a quick release for the heavy days.:thumbup:

Yeah I had to pull the fenders off my trailer for heavier loads. Now I know that the spring bolt holes were warn out, they had elongated up amost 1/4''. The spring eyelet was rubbing on the spring holder.
I welded 9/16'' fender washers to the spring holes, positioned the warshers at the lowest point of the hole, shrank the washer hole down with hard facing rod, rounded the weld back out with a dremal and installed grade 8 half inch bolts.
It should be good for a while.

If the fenders rub there might be another problem.

Fender problem is an installation problem by whoever made it (too close to the tires). I have been thinking about a quick-release solution.

And I've already done some maintenance like you describe: using the welder to fill in some elongated suspension bolt holes, and drilling them out round again. It's safer, and doesn't sound like a rattle-trap going down the road now.

Trailers rule!

Trailers are awesome. I remember burning through a ton of gas going to pick up friends trailers when I needed more than my truck bed and then burning up more gas to take them back. It got old fast. Then I got a 20 ft flatbed and I can carry whatever I want.

I use the truck for most of what I do, like hauling wood, rock, supplies....
The trailer only gets used if I need to carry something long or big. Anything that will fit in the truck, goes in the truck, regardless of weight. I can put 8,000 lbs in the truck, so I don't have to worry about overloading, and the trailer will carry about the same. I don't use it that often, but when I need it, I have it. It only cost me $400.

Today I saw a 1st-gen Chevrolet Tornado (known in Brazil as Chevrolet Montana and in South Africa as Opel Corsa Utility) with a trailer. Pics to come.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pMX_r9wbcz.../Photo3752.jpg

It's still worth to damage a cheap ugly trailer instead of risking the unibody of an average Brazilian coupé-utility such as the Chevrolet Tornado. At least if the bed was separated like in a body-on-frame truck it would be easier to just replace it, but a trailer can often be cheaper than a new pickup bed...