How have you rigged/set up/prepared your trailers to transport your robot and equipment safely? i.e. Attached shelves, tie down rings, just toss things in and hope for the best? Thanks in advance for pictures, ideas, telling me what not to do, etc.
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GPS tracker. Preferably several.
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Consider thin steel on top of the plywood on the floor to keep a super pit from going through the floor. that said, ours hasn’t.
carefully check your overhead clearance on your super pit…
Cargo rails or D-rings. Lots of them. Lots of straps.
Fold down ramp extension, fold down metal sheet to cover the ramp to trailer section
Chain to lock the wheels.
Assume some pest will cut your locks off at comp.
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Harbor Freight has very acceptable E-Track and fittings I’ve put up on the walls of ours for securing things with a variety of movable tie down point rings. I did a high row and a low row and that works fairly well for us. Get more cam or ratchet straps than you think you need. Just remember to check everything any student loads before you drive. They don’t always have the experience to understand the severity of damage that can happen from an unsecure load. Make sure to plan for the heavy stuff to be slightly ahead of your axles, you want 60% of the weight ahead of the axle for vehicle stability. A battery powered stick up light for the ceiling is useful as well for working in it in the dim hours, I like the cheap light switch LEDs they have at harbor freight as well, dirt cheap and they stick up with a magnet or velcro. You definitely want some wheel chocks for parking, and I like keeping an orange cone in mine for setting down at the corner of the ramp when loading/unloading. Trailer ball lock. You don’t have to have the best locks, you just have to have better locks than someone else.
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I’d suggest running E-track rails at both the bottom and halfway up the trailer walls for its entire length. That gives you tons of flexibility for tie-down locations, since the E-track rings can be placed wherever the load is. You can also get E-track hangers for 2x4s that allow them to act as load bars - this is helpful for a bit of extra security to prevent heavy items from moving around (especially if they are on wheels). Other accessories are also available that can interface with them.
4039 has been running with this configuration in our trailer since 2014 and it has served us well.
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D or E rated tires.
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Consider thin steel on top of the plywood on the floor to keep a super pit from going through the floor. that said, ours hasn’t.
Arkansas roads are terrible.
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Friends don’t let friends make things out of OSB
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Brushless swerve is a real menace! Just look at the damage! Clean through the hardboard.
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This is now 3/4" birch with diamond plate at the caster locations.
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This.
We also mark the exact layout of where each pit box should be, and where each strap should go to the e-track to secure said boxes, so loading the trailer up with four heavy road cases is consistent across various generations of students. Loading the cases up properly is important, especially to ensure nothing moves in-transit and the load distribution is acceptable.
-Mike
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A wheel boot, and if you you can, wrap the trailer in team livery including your number on the roof. The more distinctive the better. Trailer theft is uncomfortably common but these make it easier to recover.
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E track on the floor is a wonderful addition. Two runs might be even better.
Our trailer is bigger than it needs to be. But loading with proper tongue weight is super important especially due to the underrated vehicles I see in line at the majority of events.
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We’re using a borrowed trailer (5x10) so we make do with what we have, which is floor rings and ratchet straps. Not as nice as etracks on the walls, but passable. What I really miss is a ramp-door. Wrestling massive tool chests up a makeshift ramp that wants to detach is no fun. Also, get some of those battery “tap lights”, some of the venue loading areas we’ve used are not well lit.
We have a standard loading plan that we make sure gets passed down from year to year by making sure we have a load-in/out crew with varying ages.
There is something to be said about a blank trailer, however. You are likely making yourself more of a target to be broken into by having livery all over the trailer, though that may deter people from stealing the trailer itself. We always lock ours with a boot and tongue lock, although I’d also recommend that you just don’t unhitch. It’s can be a bit of a pain dragging trailers back and forth for a multi-day event, but that makes sure it’s not alone overnight.
Aside from the e-track and other suggestions above (which I fully agree with) a luxury that 696 has in its trailer is lighting. We have a couple of solar panels attached to the roof of a trailer to charge a 12V car battery that sits outside the front of the trailer. This then powers LED strips mounted to the ceiling inside, as well as a couple of ~12" electric fans for a car’s radiator that are mounted about a foot from the front wall of the trailer. Getting some air circulation inside makes for much more pleasant loading/unloading experiences on hot days.
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You don’t say.
We upgraded tires after this.
Also, make sure the fender light tapping screws don’t go in to deep. Think it was a bump and a screw that shredded this on the way to Oklahoma (last 15 minutes of 5+ hr drive). This side has the toolbox so it is the heavier side, so it probably sagged down a bit more.
And we’ve prior to that replaced leaf springs to heavier ones.
Altogether it was good team bonding as our students showed that they could successfully change a tire while the mentors stood back and watched, which was a proud moment last year.
And it looks like they are on sale this weekend!
https://www.harborfreight.com/5-ft-horizontal-e-track-66726.html
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Or today for the half-dozen people using my phone number at harbor freight 
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