The cost of converting a school bus plus the yearly maintenance, Plates and insurance. would make this an expensive item.

You might be better off renting one when you need it.
no plates
no insurance
no upkeep

If you buy one get

5200 lb. axles with brakes
solid wolmanized/metal deck

 

One of the local farmers also sells trailers for extra income, and I know he's got a couple car haulers on his lot - perhaps tonight or tomorrow night I'll stop by and see what he's asking for his, as usually his are the cheapest prices around. I'm pretty sure his prices were less than $2,000 for a hauler with a treated 2" thick wood deck and brakes on both axles, but I'm not sure they were as cheap as $1,500...that's a good price for a car hauler, but I'd be reluctant to get one that had 14" wheels or a plywood deck. Not all car haulers are created equal. I've seen some really nice ones for about $3K, but it sounds like that's quite a bit more than you want to spend. You can save some money by picking and choosing what options you want - for example, if you're going to be hauling vehicles that don't sit too low to the ground, then you can get away without getting the dovetail design on the rear of the trailer which will save you perhaps $100 or so.

Also, I'd look around to see if you can find a used one for sale - they don't come up for sale very often, but I've seen a few out there at reasonable prices (around $500 for a good one with brakes). As others have suggested, renting one might be a good idea if you don't plan to use it too often - and then you don't have to worry about storing it or paying for registration.

Building your own is certainly possible, but the downside is that if you use something like a truck frame & axles you'll end up with a trailer that's pretty high off the ground. This will make it tougher to load vehicles on it (you'll probably need really long ramps), and it'll be less stable on the highway and harder to tow. You'll probably want something that uses drop axles, and the only things I can think of are perhaps some types of housetrailers, or an old stock trailer might work even better. I bought my old 18' stock trailer for about $400, and that uses dual braked drop axles, has a GTW of over 10,000 pounds, and uses a 2 5/16" hitch ball. I'm not sure how easy that'd be to convert over to a car hauler, but if you live in farming country it probably wouldn't be that tough to find one for sale. Mine weighs nearly 5,000 pounds empty, but a lot of the weight would go away if you cut most of the top off.

LK

 

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 05-Jun-02 AT 06:16 PM (EST)]I would advise renting one at least the first two or three times you need one. This will let you find out what you want and don't want in a trailer. It will also let you know if you'll use it enough to warent having one. Unless it is the "I just want one" syndrome.

dj

Edit: There is nothing wrong with the "I want one syndrome".

dj

 

>Why not use an old school bus


I too thought about using a school bus and just cuting a nice hole in the back and use ramps. But with more thought it would be a lot of hassle saying the floor would have to be redone to support any car. It might be easyier to get a used tow truck but then you have to maintain another truck. Might as well buy a good car trailer.
Thats my intenion. Then I can us it for a snomobile trailer too.

 

Last night I stopped by my local farmer/new trailer dealer to check out what he had for car haulers & how much he was getting for them. He had 3 identical ones on the lot for $1,450 each, which had:

- 15" wheels
- electric brakes (front axle only)
- 2" treated wood deck (8" wide planks)
- 18' long, 2' dovetail
- 83" wide
- storage area for ramps under trailer (ramps included)
- 2" hitch

It looks like a decent trailer, but the two things that bother me are the fact that only the front axle has brakes and that the hitch is only 2" - all the trailers I've pulled recently used a 2 5/16" ball, and a 2" seems a bit small for a car hauler. However, I did a bit of searching around the 'net and it seems like 2" is pretty standard for the base-model car haulers.

For $2,000 he had a 20' hauler with a 2 5/16" ball, brakes on both axles, and 8-bolt 16" wheels - and it was some sort of oddball tilt-bed, where the rear 2/3rds of the bed tilted down so you didn't need ramps. Personally, I'm not sure that would work that well if you were loading a long-wheelbase vehicle...I'm a bit curious how that would work. I suspect he'd make a custom one without the tilt bed for a bit less - maybe $1,700 or $1,800.

I've looked around quite a bit, and from what I've seen his prices are pretty good - though the prices at any of the "cheap" places should be about the same. If you figure about $1,500 for a basic car hauler and $1,800 for a decent one, then you can use those ballpark figures when estimating how making your own trailer compares to buying new. Personally, if I was going to be hauling a full-size pickup I'd want the $1,800 trailer or something that was built similarly - you *could* haul one with the cheaper trailer, but for the extra $300 you'd have a lot safer setup.

LK