Are there any cheap single axle car haulers around?

Hey All, I live 2 miles from Superior Trailers and they can build basically a utility trailer as a car hauler;

-single drop axle, 3,500# rated

-12'x60"bed with a 2' dovetail, total 14'

-they are suggesting a 4' drop gate but maybe ramps would be better?

-13" tires (trying to keep trailer low but can go up)

-$2,500.00 plus any options

This would be towed by a 4.0/6 Ranger. I've used UHaul car haulers and they are just too heavy for regular use. The three cars to be towed and would all be no more than 12"(X1/9, CRX, and a shortened Boxster). X and CRX about 1,700 lbs., the Boxster at 2,200 lbs.

I don't have the facilities or experience to fab myself. What do you think? Or are there better alternatives out there similar to Purple Frog's trailer that are commercially available?

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/what-is-the-favorite-thing-about-your-car-trailer/173896/page1/

That looks a lot like my old lightweight. Easiest trailer in the world to load, towed like it wasn't there. Mine was old and built for a pretty light car so it got flexy with an NA Miata, but I've often thought about building another that had the structural strength to match the axle rating. Mine had ramps that I attached to the front of the tire rack for easy access - they're not in the first picture. The sloped deck meant there was no breakover point anywhere which made loading easy even with very low cars.

I used an Echo UTV trailer until recently to haul my Starlet, and it was perfect for a small car. Biggest problem with fitting anything bigger was track width capacity rather than length or load, it was only 65" between the outsides of the deck channels.

I bought it used, but I think new retail price was definitely over the $2500 quote you have for custom.

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Keith, that type that is used all over Europe but I can't find them here. A guy I knew that ran Midgets and minis in HSR had one similar and it had a rubber cone suspension from a mini.

newrider3, I checked Echo and they are relatively similar to what I'm considering, a little more sophisticated and more expensive. The Superior trailer would have a full 72" bed. I like those ramps.

I tow with a 74"x12' single axle wood deck utility trailer.  It originally had a 4' drop gate but that was horrible and heavy.  I cut it up and built a 18" dovetail out of it.  Without trying hard the weight on it is ~1000lbs.  I wouldn't go shorter or narrower.  I use HF ramps that I made hooks in front of the wheels for.  

It works good and having a full deck is convenient for trailer things when it's not hauling cars.  I added electric brakes as well.  I've not had any issues due to it being single axle and despite having 15" wheels it's still low and stable.  I took the wheels off at the challenge to unload the 360 but backing the TV on ramps does the same thing easier.  

Hasbro (Forum Supporter) said:

Keith, that type that is used all over Europe but I can't find them here. A guy I knew that ran Midgets and minis in HSR had one similar and it had a rubber cone suspension from a mini.

newrider3, I checked Echo and they are relatively similar to what I'm considering, a little more sophisticated and more expensive. The Superior trailer would have a full 72" bed. I like those ramps.

 

 

Mine was apparently built for a sandrail in the 70's. You're right that they're rare in the US, I think it's because they're limited in capacity and everyone decides they need a trailer that can haul a 20' long, 4600 lb Cadillac. It was really convenient, I could move it around by just picking up the front and it would tow easily with a smaller tow vehicle. That trailer in your first post looks like it's related.

The open deck in the middle was actually quite useful at the track because I could do a certain amount of service on the car - as can be seen :) I never had to use it for any other purpose than cars, but if I'd wanted to it would have been fairly easy to build supports for temporary boards in the middle.

Single axle trailers give me the heebie-jeebies.

They're not as stable when towing and if you have a blowout, you're almost guaranteed to have a bad day.

A lot of them come from the factory with tires that are barely adequate for the load they're carrying. My travel trailer only had 50lbs of wiggle room between the max weight of the trailer and the max capacity of the tires. I put better tires on it very quickly.

In reply to nocones :

So your bed length with the 18" dovetail is 13'6"?

ShawnG and Toot; I hear you and I realize it's a risk for the weight savings and $1,000 more. 

My single axle was very stable, I never had it move around on me.  Never tried blowing out a tire on it, though. I agree that a dual axle is going to be better in that situation. And then you make it a little bigger so you can take advantage of the 7000 lbs of axles and very soon you end up with the standard American car trailer. 

I assume that any new trailer will need new tires basically immediately because they all come with debris damage. My trailer had 15" tires on it.

I built my first trailer and it was much like Keith's, except I put a 2nd axle under it on the advice of all four maintenance foremen at the plant who all had boats. They all said it would be easier to back up. The other detail they advocated was a fairly long tongue, again to aid backing up. An extra torsion axle wouldn't add a lot of weight. I ran my trailer with no suspension and it was fine.

Edit: I later got a typical 2 axle. 18 foot trailer and I blew a tire on the freeway one day. I didn't know I had blown it until a woman came up beside us waving frantically and yelled over at us. Ideally, I'd build a light, small two axle .

Unrelated, but last week I missed a 20' aluminum trailer by an hour....it was priced at $2K and sold really quickly !

I never had a hub problem with mine. Given what I've seen tires on a dual axle do during tight maneuvering, I wonder if single axle trailers are inherently easier on hubs as they don't get those ridiculously high side loadings in parking lots.

And now I'm wondering about a trailer dually axle :)

I would like to find one of those to go behind my motorhome. My current trailer is too big.

Do they have "build your own" plans for these?

I'd like to have something like this...

In reply to Hasbro (Forum Supporter) :

At the current price of steel, $2500 for that trailer isn't unusual. If anything it's cheaper than what I'm seeing locally.

I spent a lot of time in a B4000, towing an RX-7 on a twin axle steel deck trailer.  It towed wonderfully and could pull up rolling Ohio hills in 5th as long as you kept it over 65.

I would NOT want to do this with a single axle!  The smaller the tow vehicle the more the trailer needs to be stable, and this means twin axle.  Don't worry about the additional weight, consider it muscle instead of fat.

Now I am off to look at small dual axle aluminum trailers I never thought I needed.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Did you beef up those HF ramps? I have the same style; they are fine for the F500 but they seem sketchy to me with my 1600lb Datsun.

Does anyone know someone with a metal brake that can bend 1/4 aluminum sheet?  That's about 11 feet long?

I have a tiny dual axle trailer that's just 700 lb, but the guy making them stopped in the late 90's. 
 

There is only one weld for the steel tube tongue- the rest is bent aluminum sheet.  And a punch to open the holes would be better than a drill. 

I have a single axle tilt trailer and it tows fine. I typically don't go over 65 mph but regardless I keep quality tires on it. I also have light cars (640lbs & 1650lbs).

I've stuck with the single axle trailer for two reasons:

1. I have limited space at the house.

2. My tow vehicle (campervan) is heavy (7300lbs) and underpowered (210hp) and I prefer a lighter trailer. My single axle trailer is only 800lbs.

Tom1200 said:

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Did you beef up those HF ramps? I have the same style; they are fine for the F500 but they seem sketchy to me with my 1600lb Datsun.

I didn't, and they are. You can see in the last picture that they took a little banana-ing from a 2000 lb Miata. For the 1200 lb Seven they worked just fine, and the trailer got swapped out for an enclosed about the time I got serious about dragging that Miata around. I think that's the only time I used it for the Miata. Had I kept the trailer and tried to upgrade it to handle a little more weight without the deck flexing, I would have at least added an intermediate leg to the ramps. 

In reply to alfadriver :

Whoa.....11 foot long brakes aren't common. I can imagine it makes a nice trailer though.

Edit: ALRO can do it up to 20 feet.

Tom1200 said:

I have a single axle tilt trailer and it tows fine. I typically don't go over 65 mph but regardless I keep quality tires on it. I also have light cars (640lbs & 1650lbs).

I've stuck with the single axle trailer for two reasons:

1. I have limited space at the house.

2. My tow vehicle (campervan) is heavy (7300lbs) and underpowered (210hp) and I prefer a lighter trailer. My single axle trailer is only 800lbs.

And my double axle is 700...  You can get really small dual axle trailers.

DeadSkunk (Warren) said:

In reply to alfadriver :

Whoa.....11 foot long brakes aren't common. I can imagine it makes a nice trailer though.

Edit: ALRO can do it up to 20 feet.

 

It would be nice if the drawings could be made available so that an Arlo could fabricate the parts.  Mine was bundled up and trucked to a local place, where I put it into my truck, brought it home, and assembled it.  All of the fasteners were common to get (IIRC, I got two boxes of them), and the trailer parts are common- heck, one option was to find the axles locally.

In reply to alfadriver :

Good to know; my other issue is length, my trailer is 15ft overall.