Mike, thought I would revive this thread after my evening yesterday. I BROKE MY TRAILER. First, my trailer is a seldom used thing, mainly to haul a tractor & implement back and forth from the home to the office. So I decided I needed to take home some mulch, pick up a landscape blocks, etc.
One of my guys loads 4 pallets of mulch onto the trailer for me to haul home (we sell mulch so I have lots of pallets sitting in the back lot) and I drive home. No problem. My plan is simple, hook up the fork lift attachement to the 3pt hitch and drive the pallets right off the trailer.
Problem #1, the last pallet was rotten, it collapsed on the journey, no way the pallet fork is going under there. So I just happen to have a pallet at home (shear luck, that never happens). I unload a about a 1/3 of the pallet by hand, get the pallet on the trailer light enough that I can force the forks under it, lift it off and drive away. So a bit more manual labor than anticipated, but pallet #1 is gone.
I move on to pallet #2 and that is when I find out that the inch of rain we got 2 days ago added enough weight that the 3pt won't lift up the whole pallet. OK, I start unloading the pallet and loading it onto the "extra" pallet that I already started. Take about a 1/3 of it off and the tractor easily picks it up. So I'm now wet and dirty, what I thought would be a 20 minute job is now running closer to 90 minutes. But no tragic events.
Pallet #3 is rotten, and I already know I have to do some manual unloading, and I have no pallets left to stack, so I start stacking on the ground, again take 1/3 off the pallet and drive up onto the trailer to pick up the rotten pallet. As I drive off the center support of the pallet breaks loose and is dragging on the trailer floor. Now I have no idea that is happening. The diesel engine is roaring so I don't hear any scraping noise. There is no resistance from the dragging piece of wood, and I ease the tractor onto the ramps. About the time my front tires hit the ground, the rears on the ramp, the piece of wood hanging from the bottom of the pallet snags the 1/8" raised lip of metal at the tail end of the trailer and pulls it, this in turn tears welds on the sides of the trailer where the angle iron end piece attaches. The once straight piece now is shaped like a "V" and the structural rigidity is now about equal to the strength of a wet noodle. The back of the trailer gives way and collapses. Fortunately the tractor's rear end is only about 3" above the ground and the collapse was fairly slow motion.
But there I am, the pallet is now stuck, there is no way to get it off the trailer, the tractor is on the ground and doesn't have quite enough lift at the 3pt to get the pallet off the end. So I muscle (and I am not a big guy) everything apart, so the tractor and the pallet are now safely apart. But the trailer is a mess.
Using the tractor and the forks, I am able to push the pallet back up onto the trailer almost 3' from the collapsed edge. But the damage is pretty bad. The rear of the trailer will have to be rebuilt. New angle iron welded in, and this time MORE of it will be added under that lip. So I go about bending it back into shape with a mallet. I know its trash but I can't drive it back that way. As I pound on it a glancing blow breaks loose a piece of steel that bonks me on the forehead. So now I have a cut and a bump. Screw this, I'm done!
Today I went back out to look. It can be repaired, it can easily be beefed up. I still have to unload the 2 remaining pallets by hand. But I can get the trailer safely to the shop for repairs.
I did learn a lesson. I paid about $1400 for the trailer. Most others I looked at were almost twice as expensive. I bought cheap because I only use this thing a couple times a year. Big mistake. It will cost me a bundle to have it professionally welded up and reinforced and repainted. Not to mention the time I am losing do to the problem. I had intended to make 3 trips with that trailer moving 10 pallets of mulch, a pallet of landscape stone and several implements. I'll be making other plans to move the remaining stuff.