A "little" project I just did.

[Mark @ Everlast]

A friend of mine has just opened up a cargo trailer customization shop. My town is in one of the hearts of manufacturing for pull behind trailers, with companies being based from here like Pace (now owned by the bank), HaulMark (now closed), Frontier, Covered Wagon, Hurricane, Kingdom and several others. Its a good idea and since he quit teaching a few months ago, its been steadily building business. I have been his pocket resource man, whenever he called up giving him advice on welding and service in general.

Well the other day, late in the evening, he said a guy coming through Texas had called in with a 53' Pace trailer that was bout 5 years old. He was hauling high end cars cross country when his wall on his trailer broke loose. He pulled in late Thursday, after hours, but all were waiting. He asked me to come over and inspect. I know that these trailers are built fairly flimsy, but this was the worst I have ever seen. He said the trailer new cost $1000.00 a foot. (53,000). It was terrible. He had a small rally car inside and he unloaded it and everyone started tearing into it.


I will start posting some pics, as I don't have the final ones. We brought a factory engineer out to look. He said that everyone had built them this way a few years ago. But apparently this design, called a "dust free" design was made by one designer, and all of his trailers were failing...

Anyway, the metal has not been touched, this is the way it looked when the floor came up.:shocked::shocked:

 

[Mark @ Everlast]

Although the other side was not dislodged, most of the welds were thouroughly cracked. I'd suggest if you have an enclosed cargo trailer, you might want to take a look at the other side. Some of the fix pictures will come later.

 

[texasjohn]

Looks grim.

 

[greasemonkeyok]

Note to self: If you need a 53' cargo trailer, take a couple of months off and build it yourself.

 

[k0ua]

Geez. Mark, looks like that thing is "going to need a little reinforcing"..:laughing:

Good luck!
James K0UA

 

[Thomas]

By the looks of pics there shall be alot metal fitting welding sweating to come.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

My bud who owns and builds Performax Trailers here in north Texas doesn't build them that way, but then he doesn't charge what Pace etc does either. If you showed up at the shop you would never know he's the owner because he works on every trailer that goes through himself. He doesn't do it all but he's aware of everything that happens and it has to be done right.

He crew chiefed the The Blue Max back in the day. He's retro-racing a copy of it now. He told me it's really cool because it looks like the old car but it has all the safety and performance updates.

Better than building one yourself would be to order one from Performax. Performax Trailers - Official Site

 

[Mark @ Everlast]

As soon as I retrieve the other photos from my friends camera, I'll post the pics. His camera is slightly disabled, the focus isn't working right. I hope the "good" pictures are not all blurred.

There was more that could have been done, but the guy was on a deadline delivery schedule. It was done right, but on something like this, there is always more that could be done.

 

[Stampeder]

Note to self: If you need a 53' cargo trailer, take a couple of months off and build it yourself.

X2. Or call Wroughtn_harv for his friends phone number.......

 

[wdchyd]

Yeoooo, looks like someone had no sense of "Overkill"....might or could have been a disaster over the road when hustling along loaded at 70 plus mph......Yikes....:thumbdown: