Advice on buying a trailer

[RogerS]

Thinking of getting a trailer to collect wood. I know nothing about them! 2 wheels or 4 wheels? braked or unbraked? I've seen one that has no electrics....so is it simple to fit electrics? As you may guess, I know nothing (to quote Manuel).

TIA

I do have a towbar on the car!

 

[DrPhill]

I know almost nothing, but I would suggest that aa lot depends upon the weight of logs that you wish to transport at any one time. I can imagine that a trailer too small would be inefficient - requiring two journies where a larger trailer may have needed only one - but I can also imagine it being harder to 'stabilise' a small load in a large trailer.

Shame you are not near west somerset, or you could have had my trailer cheap as an experiment.

 

[marcros]

how much weight are you looking to carry Roger?

electrics arent a huge job, or needn't be. I bought a pre-made lighting board for £35 yesterday, along with a number plate for a tenner, and that is all that you need. If the trailer wasnt over 4ft wide, the lighting board didnt need fog lights on, so would have been a bit cheaper. I didnt want to get pulled over for the sake of something trivial, so upgraded the one that is on it which didnt have all of the reflectors and fog lights on! (I used wilco motorsave).

Mine is 2 wheeled, unbreaked and was £160 on ebay, collected from a few miles away. It really needs the base rebording (see my other thread), but the rest seems sound enough. I am subject to the new license requirements, so cant tow a great deal of weight anyway. I found it handy not to have high sides like some of the camping trailers, and to be able to fit full sheets in to it at least width ways.

Work out what size you want, check that it is sound before you buy and you cant go far wrong. If you are wanting to spend quite a bit more, for example on an ifor williams, ignore my advice and check with somebody who knows these things.

Trailer ownership in the last 3 weeks has been revitalising- so many collections planned, so many loads to the tip...!

 

[Bigdanny]

Hi Roger,
If a trailer has no lights then you can buy magnetic trailer lights or trailer boards. If you dont have secure parking then is easy to remove these. I would recommend to wire them on as well as sometime vibrations can knock them off, but they perform the task perfectly adequately.
As to size of trailer, its limited by your cars towing ability, you car handbook should tell you and there may be a metal plate fixed to the towbar of the car. Smaller cars 750 Kg larger to 2 tons. Usually 4x4 for loads higher than that.
But for you to collect wood you will probably want to buy 4 metre lengths. so a ladder bar at the head is handy to load them on this. Ideally its best not to have loads hanging out the back of the trailer ( max 50cm I think with reflector ).Having too much over the rear can make the trailer unstable.

A trailer is a very good investment. I have two Linton Tipper twin-axle trailers which can carry 2 tons ( Often a bit more) .
I normally tow these with a Landrover but if I only need a small amount of material then will happily use my little Skoda. Have to be a bit cautious as the trailer alone weighs 600Kg.

If you or a good friend have welder then a very good option for a lightweight but long trailer is to chop up an old caravan. You would be able to reuse the lights and make up body for trailer with angle iron and Waterresistant plywood.

Hope this has given you some ideas
Danny

 

[marcros]

i should also add:

check condition of tyres and wheel bearings as part of the survey. these bits are often ignored by sellers that use them twice a year for a couple of short journeys. easy enough to check though.

you have one of Solihull's finest dont you Roger, so weight wont be a huge issue?

 

[themackay]

Its probably a bit of a minefield being legal these days I just bought myself a 4 wheel ifor williams trailer after many years of using home made unbraked my problem was going to quarry for sand etc these days minimum charge is a tonne so I bit the bullet and bought trailer capable of 1 and a half tonne.So it all depends how much you want to carry at a time and how much you want to spend.
DVLA website for rules and regs which im told have changed this month.
Alan

 

[RogerS]

Brilliant info, thanks chaps...a lot of food for thought.

Ladder bar is a great idea....useful to know the proper name, as well. And didn't realise about overhanging out the rear having a limit.

What has prompted this is that I have some timber to collect down near Taunton. Although relatively short at 2m they won't go in the back of the Discovery and there is too much to go on a roof rack. A man with a van will charge me £160 (and for an extra £20 two men so I don't need to lose a day). Diesel will cost me at least £60. But then if I went down I could go down a bit further to Bridport and stock up on hand-dived scallops (yum!).....but a trailer would be useful.....perhaps.

 

[Gary Morris]

When I bought a caravan, I went to a site like this http://www.towcar.info/advise.php - theres a calculation to do with the kerb side weight of your car and the weight towed to give a safe max weight to tow.
Might be of some use.

Gary

 

[RogerS]

Thanks for the link, Gary. 1.8 tons :shock:

 

[hanser]

Roger

Round our way you can hire a plant trailer for £20 a day - taking lengths up to 2.4M. Unless you have a recurring requirement it probably doesn't pay to buy outright. For another tenner you can hire a long wheel base transit.

Hanser

 

[RogerS]

Roger

Round our way you can hire a plant trailer for £20 a day - taking lengths up to 2.4M. Unless you have a recurring requirement it probably doesn't pay to buy outright. For another tenner you can hire a long wheel base transit.

Hanser

That's a bloody good idea!

 

[Lons]

Hi Roger

Permanent wiring is a doddle and trailer board even easier.
My first trailer, I made myself many years ago by welding 2 x2 angle but I wouldn't do it now as they can be picked up quite cheaply.I would buy a braked version as it's easy to exceed the load and the police are hot on trailers these days.
What Marcos said about high sides is right but it can be a nuisance as well. I have a couple of old 8x4 sheets of shuttering ply which I stand on edge along the sides then some 2x2 which I wedge along the bottom side to side held with temporary screws into the ply. Ropes over the top and it never moves in use. Also rigged up temporary support for garage doors and large window frames too large for my van.

Mine is an Ifor Williams 8 x 4 twin axle as I said and it weighs 1/2 tonne empty and has a payload of 2 tonnes. I paid £700 s/hand about 12 years ago and it's paid for itself many times over plus I'd still get at least half that back. It's written off through the business anyway which is a bonus.
Beware, if you did buy a "goodun" that they are sought after and stolen to order so you could need secure storage.

As suggested, hiring might be the answer so worth a google locally. Once you've had a trailer you won't be able to do without it

Been rambling on again - sorry

Bob

 

[dickm]

An Ifor W for less than £1000??????
Tell me the next time you see one, and I'll be there

 

[Lons]

An Ifor W for less than £1000??????
Tell me the next time you see one, and I'll be there

Yebbut...........it was 12 years ago I wonder what £700 was compared with today?

Actually it had an aluminium canopy like the type fitted to carry livestock though the guy carried mountain bikes. I sold the canopy for £90 toa local farmer as I kept bashing my head on the thing

Bob

 

[Phil Pascoe]

At least if you hire you haven't the worry of having one stolen - my last one (750kg capacity) was picked up complete with hitch lock and wheel clamp at 3am and thrown on a low loader. My dog was asleep 4yds away, and didn't wake - that's how quick and quiet they were.

 

[cambournepete]

Before I moved out to NZ I had a Brenderup 1150S.
Danish, two wheels, unbraked.
It was brilliant, most of the time I couldn't tell it was there as it rode well and didn't affect the handling of the car.

Avoid cheap trailers with small wheels - they bounce all over the place!

 

[Jonzjob]

You don't really need a big trailer to carry long and heavy loads, or a ladder bar either. Just follow this Australian gentlemans example

:shock: :shock: :shock: :shock:

 

[graduate_owner]

Hi RogerS,
be careful if you are considering getting a trailer made up at home because I think there are new regulations (or soon will be) regarding these. I don't think the law stretches to existing trailers, and I'm not sure how anyone could prove your trailer is new or existing anyway. I was offered a caravan to convert a few months ago and researched the topic on the web, but decided to decline the offer. Many diy enthusiasts said the end results were rarely worth the effort and cost because caravans are not designed for weight carrying..

Regarding size, I made one 6ft 6ins long by 4ft wide with a ladder rack at the front, and it has been so incredibly useful that I would not want to be without it (the trailer, not the ladder rack, although that's well worth having too). The only thing about the ladder rack is that I wish I had made it removable, in fact I'm going to make that modification. When carrying stuff in wet weather it would be handy to be able to throw a tarpaulin over the entire trailer and lash it down all round. As it is, the tarpaulin sticks up around the rack and some wet always gets in when travelling. Also make sure that the internal width is 4ft or 1200mm, so that man made boards will fit in widthways, even if they do have to stick out a bit. And don't forget lashing points for rope / straps (and not positioned so the rope always catches the light cluster, or obscures the number plate, as in my first attempt - sod's law.).

I used car tyres but there's a definite trend towards proper trailer tyres these days. I'm not sure if they are better, but when I made mine most people used car tyres

Finally, it's probably cheaper to buy a used one at auction, even if it needs some work, than to buy the wheels, stub axles, steel, hitch etc etc and make your own from scratch.

Hope this helps,

K

 

[dickm]

Pretty sure that a lot of the "construction and use" regs have applied to new-build trailers for quite a few years.
With regard to tyres, be careful if thinking of self-build, or replacing existing tyre on a big trailer. Most car tyres are rated for a maximum load around 300kg (van tyres will be higher) so the gross weight for a two wheeler would need to be under 600kg to be safe on car tyres.

 

[graduate_owner]

Yes, if using car wheels you do need to tell the tyre guys that you want heavier duty tyres for a trailer - greater ply rating. And if you buy a second hand trailer with car tyres, check the tyres before loading the trailer, and get them changed if they're not up to the job, else it's very easy to overload them.

K