You could probably get away with a standard angle iron sixteen foot trailer with two thirty five hundred pound axles. Here in Texas they're pretty reasonable. A friend just bought one for a tad over seven hundred dollars.
Your Toyota will pull it fine, complain, but do it. And they have this little sealed block you can buy that will convert your separate systems for brake and turn signal lights to a single system so your lights will work on the trailer properly.
The big glitch is stopping. Your Toyota can pull that tractor and trailer up a mountain. Coming back down again that tractor and trailer is gonna stretch your pucker string so tight that it will take you a week to get some slack back. And if you are on a wet street you'd better plan on starting to try stopping six blocks early.
There are two braking systems available for your size of combination. Surge or hydraulic as some say and then there's electric.
Surge or hydraulic is where the coupler has a rod that transfers the inertia from when you hit your brakes to a master cylinder that applies the trailer brakes. Think of it like having someone on the trailer that's asleep until they feel you hit your brakes and then they hit theirs.
Surge brakes have some great things going for them. If you're like a friend of mine and have Bobcats that you loan your subcontractors you use surge brakes to make sure they have brakes on the trailer. Because you know that half of them aren't going to invest in an electric brake controller. They're gonna just drive safe. Righttttttttttttttttttttttttt. With surge brakes on the trailer there's brakes on it no matter what the tow vehicle. Rental yards also put surge brakes on their bigger trailers. The military uses surge brakes on the trailers for Humvees etc.
The downside of surge brakes is they can make you want to abandon the trailer in the middle of the freeway if everything isn't adjusted just right. Traffic slows, you hit your brakes, surge brakes activate, you feel a jerk. You take you foot off the brake, another jerk as the brakes release, then there's the reactivation as it pushes forward, brakes activate again, another jerk. If the trailer is empty and the brakes are not adjusted right you will wonder if you'll have a bumper at the next mile marker.
Another problem with surge brakes is backing up a hill or over a bump. When you back up you are doing the same thing as far as the trailer brakes see as hitting the brakes. So they apply the brakes. The harder you try to back up the more brakes you apply and it just gets worse. That's why with surge brakes you have to get out and set a lever when you're gonna back up against resistance.
Electric brakes operate from a controller under you dash. It's a simple little box that interprets the pressure you're applying to your brake pedal into current to a set of magnets that are riding against the inside face of your trailer brake drum. This magnet is attached to your leading shoe on the brake. As it grabs at the face of the drum inertia pulls both shoes out to grab the drum. The harder you apply the brakes on your Toyota, the harder the brakes are applied to your trailer brakes.
The biggest problem with electric trailer brakes is folks not having controllers in their trucks.
If you bought one of those economy trailers you can go to Northern or TSC and get a set of drums and backing plates for electric brakes for about a hundred dollars an axle I believe. The controller will set you back fifty plus. New GM trucks with the tow package have a plug with some wires on it in the glove box. All you do is wire your controller to the plug, plug it in under the dash and if you're a neat nick velcro the the controller to the dash etc. If your Toyota is relatively new you might want to check on getting one that's made specifically for your truck. They have them for all the different brands. At the back end you can now buy your trailer plug where all you have to do is unplug your factory plug at the back. Plug in the insert. And plug back in the lights to the truck. Run your plug to your bumper and attach it. None of this checking which wire goes where driving your wife and kids crazy trying to help you as you do irreparable damange to your truck wiring.
There are two lines of thought on using brakes on just one axle on tandem axled trailers. Some folks like to have the brakes on the front axle as it normally picks up the most weight when you try to stop. Then the back axle coasts. And then there are those that feel putting the brakes on the back axle is better. I'm a front axle man myself.
I like having brakes on one axle on the lighter trailers. The reason is that coasting axle helps keep the trailer straight even if the brakes lock up. There's nothing quite to compare with that feeling you get in the seat of your pants like the one you get when you're in a panic stop and in your mirror you see your tractor in side profile and about to come up and park next to you.
The only thing worse than that is going along slow trying to gauge the lights and traffic so you can stop if you have to when someone pulls out in front of you. You know exactly how lunchmeat feels at that moment.
If you have surge brakes and want electric all you have to do is change backing plates which come with shoes and magnets. The drums are the same. You don't even have to change out the coupler just lock it up so that you don't get the jerking.
If you have electric and you want surge you can buy the backing plates, hydraulic lines, and the coupler. The couplers start off about a hundred and a half for a cheap one and go up from there.
Here in Texas when I got my big trailer inspected he told me that it was a pending law where all axles on new trailers were gonna have to have brakes. I can't see how they're gonna do that but surely if they make a law they've got all the details figured out, right?
I have a seven thousand pound tilt single axle trailer. I have ten ply tires on it. My truck weighs twelve thousand pounds, it's a truck. I still don't like towing my JCB165HF on the single axle trailer because I know all I have is one tire and wheel per side. If that tire goes then I've got a problem. A fifty five hundred pound problem tied to my truck.
I also have a fifteen thousand pound (two eight thousand pound axles but they derated it because of the spring hanger location is all I can figure) tandem trailer. I know with it one tire flat means I've got a flat on the trailer.
I'd think twice about hauling my treasured tractor on a single axle trailer more than around the block.
