Building Your Own Trailer

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Originally Posted by DoubleChevron

This is interesting. I thought the chinese larger trailers would be way cheaper than building them yourself. Just pricing a twin axle kits with wheels and brakes will set you back a couple of grand .... Then there is the eye watering price of metal from the local metal merchants!

I have no doubt you are right though. I've always been surprised by how expensive trailers are (for what they are).

seeya,
Shane L.

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Actually Shane you may be right there...

For small trailers we are really comparing to imports which is what the market is all about, but most of the big stuff we are comparing to is Aus made. When I'm talking big, we're normally talking things like tandem enclosed, 2.4mx5mish table tops and tippers, horse floats etc which are not normally imported I don't think, So for example a $20k horse float would cost us about $9k to build, a $20k 3 way tipper costs us about $10k to build etc. I wont go into brands, because as a school the companys are really good to us in terms of supply and sometimes supply us with proprietry components where they normally wouldn't. Most of the cost is in the components and the finish for us. 3.2T tandem rolling component setups cost about $2600 and interestingly a 4.5T triple is about the same cost. Powdercoat can be up to about $2k but depends on the surface area. Aussie trailer manufacturers are very slick operations with their production and the products are good, especially Dean Trailers, but you're still looking at one off and batch production processes done by tradies. Mind you, the industry is going through a period of development right now and there is investment in plasma and laser which has certainly changed ute tray manufacturing in terms of speed, cost and quality, so it will be interesting to see if that somehow migrates across to trailer manufacture, and I suspect it will.

For a fairly basic welder like myself, I would find it easier to 'rebuild' an old trailer, than start from scratch, at least you have something to work with and you are just taking out and adding in bits and peices.

As to the chinese trailers, I went through it all here in NZ a while back, I was after a tandem galv cage trailer, the locally built ones are far superior in build quality and I dare say longevity, but are roughly twice the price. I ended up with a NZ made one, as I factored in the extra price and divided it by the 30yrs or so that I will have it, and it wasn't that much more if you looked at it that way.

My parents have a chinese one, and it serves its purpose, but after about 5yrs of very light use, you can tell that it isn't going to be as long a lasting trailer.

Some outfits here get them made in China, and assemble them here to their specs, ie decent stubs and bearings etc, and weld together, not bolt. Those trailers seem a reasonable option too, as they are not quite as cheap as the Chinese proper, but not as expensive as the NZ made.