I purchased a cargo trailer a few weeks back shortly after working out my plans for having one. It is a basic 7 foot wide, 12 foot long, 6’6″ tall box on wheels with a cargo ramp on the back and a human-sized door on the side. I got it home from Kelowna on March 10th and have been assembling a few bits and bobs for it since then.
What have I added to the trailer and why? It isn’t a great mystery but owning a trailer is all ‘new’ to me, so I thought I’d capture some of my choices here.
Ramp
The loading ramp is where my various wheeled devices will have their introduction to trailering. I have loaded a few things into trailers in the past, and also watched a few videos of the process. One observation I had from these past experiences was that getting over small edges and making it up even a mild inline can quickly make the loading process a lot harder.
My objective with the ramp, then, was to reduce the edges and add some traction. I added a flip-down ‘ramp for the ramp’ to eliminate the 4 cm or so entry edge. I found a company called Caliber that makes exactly what I was looking for: Edge Glides (Amazon). The nice thing about this product is that it can comes in two foot pieces that can be fitted to different ramp widths fairly easily.
Caliber also makes products for ramp traction that looked pretty good, but I decided (for now) to cheap out and use something less sophisticated so I could get it done quickly and cheaply. I bought a couple of rolls of one foot wide anti-slip ‘tape’ (Amazon) and stuck that down.
My initial observation is that the tape doesn’t stick as well as I’d like, but I’m going to blame myself for that. It seems secure and provides good traction when you stand on it, but it starts to ‘peel’ off the ramp fairly quickly when the ramp is closed. The instructions say that wood surfaces should be treated with anti-slip primer before putting the tape down: I should have done that, but this was intended to be a ‘quick fix’. It looks like it will be a quick fix that doesn’t last very long.
Tie-downs
I like having options when it comes time to fasten things down. In the case of my trailer I had e-track installed along the walls and floor to provide lots of attachment points. I also acquired some e-track compatible rings so I could use tie-downs that use either traditional ‘hooks’ or ones specifically made for e-track.
Then I went a bit crazy with the ratcheting tie-downs themselves. I have everything ranging from 1,000 pound to 5,000 pound break strength straps with a mix of retractable and standard ratchets. I also have a selection of soft straps for the forks and axle straps for frames of the motorbikes, trike, and lawn tractor I expect to be transporting. Most of what I bought is from Rhino which seems to have a good reputation for this kind of product.
I thought about how to store all these straps for quite a while. For now at least I’m just attaching them to the e-track or rings as appropriate and putting them under a bit of tension. I might get or build some shelves and cubbies later if my ‘simple’ solution turns out to cause problems.
The final ‘tie down’ related item in the trailer is the motorcycle wheel chock. I had this removable chock installed by the trailer company and it is probably the simplest of the alternatives I could have picked. The basic mechanism holds the front wheel of a motorcycle in place: with a two wheeled vehicle this has the effect of holding the bike upright.
A couple of straps are then attached to ‘pull’ the bike into the chock which holds it firmly in position. I’m also going to put a couple of straps around the frame towards the back to further hold down the bike and keep it from shifting. I will test this out before hauling my bike to the dealer for trade in.
”Security’
I’m not too worried about someone stealing my trailer from home, but a little security never hurts. Mostly, however, my locks and such are for when I’m on the road. I anticipate I might have to stay overnight a few places with a loaded trailer, and making it at least a bit less attractive to thieves seems like a wise idea.
Hitch hindrances
I opted for two security obstacles relating to the hitch. First is a Trimax lock that fits into the hitch ball ‘receiver’ (Amazon) on the trailer. The idea is that someone can’t just pull up and hook their truck to the disconnected trailer without getting past a few inches of hardened steel.
Second line of defence is a Retrue lock for the coupler mechanism (Amazon). This is intended to prevent someone from disconnecting the trailer from my truck when it is attached. I also have a lock on the adjustable hitch and hitch receiver on my truck itself.
Ramp resistance
The side door on the cargo trailer has built-in locks, and the ‘valuable’ stuff I load into the trailer will be too large to fit out that door anyway. The ramp, however, is a great way for baddies to take my goodies, so I opted for some fairly robust locks there. The Trimax ‘haspless’ loading ramp locks seemed like a good choice: the picture above shows the lock unlocked with the locking mechanism ‘exposed’. When locked it is a puck-sized block of metal with no obvious access points.
Obviously none of this ‘security’ stuff will amount to much of a deterrent for a serious thief. But it should slow an amateur down a bit, and that is at least something.
Putting it together
I fully expect to discover that at least some of my ‘fittings’ are not great or that I’ve forgotten something important entirely. But for now at least I think I’ve hit most of the main things I might need or want when hauling things around in the trailer.
