Awhile back I was looking into an aluminum tilt bed trailer. One thing lead to another but the bottom line was I just couldn't bring myself to drop alomost $8 K on a car trailer. Soooo...I built my own. The deck IS aluminum however and it does save some weight AND I won't ever need to worry about splinters!

 

That looks AWESOME!!! You should be very proud of yourself.

 

That sir is a nice trailer. I think I need to borrow that for a couple years.

 

That looks sweet! Job well done!

 

I'm just curious of the total cost, not including your time, to build it versus buying one from Carson and replacing the wood deck with aluminum.

 

Great looking trailer Charlie.

 

Very nice job. Thanks for sharing the pictures. How is the aluminum deck fastened to the perimeter frame? How about the cross bracing, is the deck fastened there? What thickness aluminum did you use? How many pieces of decking did you use?

 

Very nice, and looks like some nice paint too!

 

That's a great looking trailer! Excellent work!

 

ATTA BOY. Looks Great.

 

Nice trailer. Good job

 

I would like to know that also. That is a great looking trailer.

 

Very nice - Too bad you're in Cali and I'm in PA

 

Chuck I say when you and Ms. drive to Lebanon this year just drop it off at the Outlet Mall there on I-40 and I will drive over and get it. Sounds good to me. You did an outstanding job.

 

There is an interesting backstory to this trailer...I bought a 16 ft Big Tex trailer about 5 years ago. I used it occasionally but never got around to getting the registration in my name. Here in Calif trailers are "permanently" registered, that is, no yearly registration fees and no title (unless you want to pay extra for one). When I went to the DMV they asked me to have the trailer inspected by the CHP...what resulted in that process was that the trailer had been stolen, probably by the guy who sold it to me. So much for the back story...
I had purchased new wheels, tires, hubs, brakes, fenders, LED lighting, etc for that trailer so when I had to relinguish it to the CHP they told me to take off anything that I had put on it, which I did. I now had a pile of nice new parts and no trailer so I built this one and used the parts that I had bought for the old one.

I bought the 2x5 0.120 wall steel and all the angle and smaller rectangular tubing from the metal supply store...it ran about $575. The aluminum in the deck is 9.5 inch wide stadium seating that was bought surplus from the LA USD for $400...that included cutting the 24 ft long sections down to 77.5 inches. Mounting the aluminum was done using the actual mounting tabs that the stadium seating guys use. It **** four clips for each section, 2 on each end, and there are 22 sections. The Dexter Torflex axles were another high-ticket item at around $650 for the pair delivered.

Doing a rough total of all the major items I come up with around $2,800 in materials which includes the tongue box. As for how that compares with Carson, et al I would have to say that there isn't much of a comparison. Most of the 18 ft trailers I have seen from Carson, Big Tex, and local builders come with leaf spring axles and 5x3 inch angle frames and wood plank decks. I asked some of the dealers how much the cost would go up to add the torsion and a metal deck...the price went up by over a grand.
I guess the best way I could put it is that I got exactly what I wanted when I built it and any cost savings were icing on the cake. I knew it would be less than the tilt aluminum trailer I was looking at and I knew that it would be better quality than the factory offerings, so I guess that was reason enough to do it.

Here are a couple of more pics of the frame...the curvature in the axles prevented me from going with my original design which used a single center support but I think that the two wider support beams are stronger and worth the added weight. I am in the process of adding the ramp brackets now...they are 4000 LB rated, all aluminum, weighing only 23 LBS each and slide in under the deck from the rear.