I volunteered to drive the band trailer for the high school a few years ago, and the trailer was loaned by a former band parent. When I picked it up from his house, he assured me he just checked tire pressure, greased the hubs, etc. He handed me a small tub of grease and said "just pop those off and smear the grease there" as he pointed to the rubber plugs. Hmmm. I got it home, and checked for myself. Ssure enough he had popped off the rubber plugs and packed the area full of grease, right over the axle nut and zerk. They were ez lube hubs but apparently he didn't know what a grease fitting was or how to properly pull the hub to grease it 'old school'. When we pulled the hubs to check them, it was obvious the hadn't been lubed in years. Oh, and the tires had under 20 lbs of pressure. I went over everything on it after that, bringing it up to safe standards for him (for the school really). It makes me think about how other trailers are maintained when I see them on the road.
For people like me who don't tow often, it is would be easy to make a lot of mistakes. Years ago, one of my boys had an old F150, the first truck in our family. I took it to get a load of sand for a sandbox for his little brother. I'm not sure why but I gave the truck a once over and topped the tires off at 1 lb less than the max cold rating on the tire. When I got to the sandlot, the loader asked what the tire pressure was in the tires. When I told him, he said okay, I'll load it. He then explained he had seen too many people come in with underinflated tires and they never even made it out of the yard. I was also smart enough to take the low speed back roads home rather than the interstate.
Fast forward to last year when I bought my first trailer, a used light duty 5x8. The guy was selling it because he moved from KS to MO and was going to have all sorts of problems because KS doesn't require titling/licensing small trailers and MO does. I live in KS and use it only in KS so it's no big deal to me not to title or license it. A couple of things I noticed was that the tires were so old they had severe weather checking and didn't seem to be fully inflated and that the trailer lights were broken. But it didn't look like it had been abused or pushed past its low weight limit. It wasn't too bad of a price so I bought it and then realized I didn't have a bolt/wire/lock/anything to make sure the latch didn't pop up. (I was smart enough to have the right size ball, 2", on my hitch but I never thought there might be different strengths to the same size ball. I'm pulling light enough it's not a problem but it is something I never thought of.) I made a slow run to a nearby Lowe's and bought a couple of small locks for the latch. I did know enough to cross the safety chains but I've never thought to check to see if they had too much slack. Researching tires, I soon learned that trailer tires take a lot more air than car and light truck tires. The old tires had 35 lbs, probably good because with that weather checking they would have probably popped at their limit. By now, I'm guessing you get my point that newbie towers don't know what they don't know. I read threads like this one partly for entertainment and partly to learn from others "adventures". I replaced the lights long ago but need to better secure the wiring. Something snagged it a little on the last use and some of it is now hanging. I keep the tires at 85 lbs, their cold limit. I'm used to sealed bearings and it pulls easily by hand so I haven't worried about the bearings. (It doesn't have zerks that I have noticed so I made a probably erroneous assumption that they are sealed.) But I will check them soon. I'm guessing they probably need grease.
I'm sure I need to learn more about trailering but I tow light, stay below the speed limit and out of heavy traffic. I am meticulous/obsessive about tieing loads securely. (I almost died because some idiot didn't secure his load and I wound up a high side at 70 mph.)
Speaking of not securing loads, on the way home last night I saw what I thought was a big cardboard box on the interstate. As it was very windy, I moved to the far lane and slowed a little to give me a lot of room should it move. As I got close to it, I realized it wasn't a cardboard box but a large well built dog house. It had survived coming off a vehicle or trailer at probably 70 mph and looked to be in good shape. Just another example of somebody not realizing how easy it is for anything on the back of a truck or trailer to come off at speed.
Sorry for the ramble. It's just the perspective of a newbie who is trying to figure out what he doesn't know.
