Buying a team trailer - Advice please?

FIRST General Forum
1

Hi,

Team 910 has been given a generous donation to purchase a “trailer of our choosing” to transport the team robot, batteries, cart and tools to and from competitions for the coming year (and beyond). It can be new or used (whatever we want) and we’re looking at the $2,000 price range or so. With Michigan’s new district event structure, being able to transport the robot ourselves is more important than ever.

We were thinking a 5x8 would be a nice size, or maybe even up to a 5x10? We want to be able to tow it behind any family’s minivan or pickup so don’t want anything overly heavy or unwieldy. We figure we’d like to be able to store the robot upright (therefore a 5’ high interior (with a way to get it in there) would be nice. Not sure if a ramp rear door or vertical doors would be better.

Can anyone give us advice as to what to buy and some “lessons learned” please? BTW, if we get a used one, we might have enough money left over to buy some neat vinyl graphics with “Foley Freeze Robotics / Team 910” across the sides. Does anyone have a line on how / where to get this made?

Thanks much!

John

Maybe something like this Haulmark 5x8 would be good?
http://www.bishopfoley.org/organizations/robotics/trailer.jpg

2

John,

If you get one big enough for 2 robots, I’m sure you’ll be popular when you share. I’ve seen this for transportation to IRI, for example.

3

i would go for whatever one is cheaper but a small trailer like that would be perfect but more room is always better anything under 2,500 lbs you could pull with a van i know my nissan quest will pull 2 900lb hay rolls no problem, what kind of vehicle do you have

4

I’ve got a Dodge Grand Caravan with a 2" ball, and a number of members have pickups or minivans. I agree that more capacity is always nicer (esp. being able to haul two) - I’m just worried about the weight (and I guess mileage) of hauling anything too big. The school has a nice storage garage we can use to keep it in.

5

The 5x8 trailer you show above is about the biggest you will want to get if you intend to pull it with a mini-van. Anything larger, and you will likely overload the transmission, particularly if you are on a long drive. Blowing out the transmission on your mini-van while hauling a trailer 700 miles from home is not fun. Trust me on this.

-dave

.

6

Make sure you have enough room for not only the robot, but also the cart and anything else (tools, pit) that will not fit in the mini-van well.

Unless the cart fits with the bot on top, a ramp does not buy you a whole lot, and takes up more space behind the trailer in a tight unloading situation than a pair of doors will.

7

I’ll have to check the specs on the one we’ve got. I know it can be pulled by a minivan (and has been in the past).

It fits 3 robots plus gear very nicely and has both a ramp/back door and a side door. Probably on the bigger end of things but we’ve managed to pull it with just about anything.

I’ll see if I can get some more details on it. :o

8

A trailer comes in very handy when you need to move your shop and robots around. Team 1345 recently bought this trailer and we are very happy with it. Please email me or send me a pm and I can give you details about this trailer.

9

well i don’t think he’ll have a problem with the transmission its probably an six cylinder should pull fine its only a 5x10 and mileage wise my 93 suburban gets 20 miles to the gallon pulling my hobie cat

10

We have a parent with a 6x12 that retails for $4,000 and required a good size truck to pull. For the fall classic (a southern California off season event) we used it to transport our 08 robot, a prototype crab, several toolchest and rolling carts, a large table and still had plenty of his heating and air conditioning equipment (the purpose of the trailer usually).

So for referance, I’d say something smaller than 6x12 will do fine :wink: .

11

One helpful tip for towing a trailer with a vehicle that’s not really made for it (ie. any vehicle with fewer than 8 lugnuts holding on each wheel)…make sure to take it out of overdrive when towing.

12

1676 uses a 5 x 8 trailer much like that one with excellent results. We have a ramp rear door, which makes it slightly easier to load the trailer, but really heavy stuff either can’t be pushed up (too steep) or might bend the door…so we lift it up in most cases.

You need lots of tie-downs inside, and an interior light. If you can afford a spare tire, get one - they sell mounts for the tongue area. Get a wheel-type front prop, the kind that cranks down, so you can move the empty trailer around easily and disconnect it when you need to.

The big demon when towing is wind resistance, so stay out of overdrive (as squirril stated) and keep the speeds down. Improves your safety/fuel economy/state of mind/harm to the tow vehicle, too.

Don

13

Hi John!

We bought a Danzer trailer for our team to use two years ago, at a cost of about $2400, which included a mounted spare tire (and it was a good thing, we have had 2 flats in the two years!). The trailer is 6x10 feet, single axle, with rubber torsion suspension. This makes it less bouncy for the robot, cart and gear. It has side hinged opening rear doors and a side “front door” for easy access. We chose hinged door over ramp doors, as some other folks here did, because of the limited parking spaces that are sometimes available. This is especially a concern if you end up having to parallel park van/truck and trailer.

We chose a trailer with a 6 foot tall door opening and the interior is about 6’8" at the peak of the roof. This simplifies robot loading tremendously, because we can load the robots straight in without tipping them, and it’s easy to stand up inside the trailer. The trailer also has an air vent in the roof, very important on hot days. We’ve carried three robots and gear easily, and the extra space gives us a place for team luggage, so we don’t need to load it in our hauling vehicle (a Ford E150 conversion van).

Because of the lighter weight loads involved in hauling robots, a single axle is all that’s really necessary, but it is important to load the trailer slightly heavy in the front ( so we put our battery boxes there) in order to keep the trailer from fishtailing when towing. The trailer we chose has a rounded front with diamond plate at the bottom rather than a pointed front, to give us more interior loading room. The trailer’s footprint is almost identical to our van, so wind resistance is minimal. We added “D” hooks about halfway up on each side wall, attached through the trailer inside wood to the metal structure of the trailer and bought ratchet straps to secure everything. The hooks are aligned with the metal vertical supports, so they’re about 2 feet apart.

If I were to do this again, I would add an additional layer of wood from the strap point to the floor, since we seem to have experienced a lot of damage from loading and unloading and things in the trailer shifting. My best advice - SHOP, SHOP, SHOP! We found our trailer out of state in Pennsylvania
(about an hour away), and it was not a brand we had seen locally, but it’s an impressive trailer and we got a great deal. The downside of the Danzer trailer - they could have used better galvanizing on the door hinges and latch hardware and could have done a better job in smoothing the trailer’s skin when riveting it to the frame.

Haulmark is a very good brand of trailer, from what we have seen. Do you have to title the trailer in Michigan? Maryland requires that we do, but Pa. does not…also make sure that your hauling vehicle’s insurance will cover the trailer (it should, but ask anyway). The value of the trailer itself, for theft, is not covered unless listed separately on either an automotive or homeowner’s policy.

Owning a trailer has allowed us the flexibility of keeping it loaded with robot, etc., which has been great when we have a number of demonstrations to do over a short period of time.

Good luck finding the right trailer for your team!!

Fred Needel
Team 768

14

This might be a good deal, a 5 x 8 Pace for $1,000. in Rochester Hills, MI:
http://detroit.craigslist.org/for/862595326.html

Saw Shores Trailer (Eastpointe, MI) list some prices on the Detroit Craigslist. I don’t know if they are a good trailer, but FWIW:

Brand new enclosed trailers.
Pricing:
5x8…starting at $1495
6x10 side door starting at $1795
Other sizes and models available, call for prices. 586 777 7733

The side door on the trailer pictured is nice. I noticed that Haulmark makes some low-profile trailers that will fit through a standard garage door opening height, which could be useful.

15

I feel your pain - no fun in a Suburban, either. There was nothing in our 12-foot trailer full of tools that could help the blown transmission. We need something that large, because we are homeless and our pit set-up and robots live there.

16

Thanks for the tip Dick! I’ve been checking CraigsList pretty regularly and hadn’t seen this one. I called them and am going to meet them this weekend and take a look at it. If it checks out, we’ll buy it. Thanks again!

P.S. Anyone have a line on getting custom graphics painted/vinyl on the sides?

17

one with a ramp and a light and a vent.!! and a lot of places to tie things down!
and maybe brakes.

18

We bought a 6 x 10 2 years ago and our only regret is that we didnt purchase it earlier. Ours is a Cargo Mate froma large dealer in Indianapolis.

We have double doors and a side door, and made an aluminum ramp for the back.

If you can assure a vehicle to pull it, go for something that is over 6’ inside to make it easier to load and unload.

We added several “D” rings on the floor and walls and roof supports to give us places to attach tie down straps. Ask the dealer where the suppports run in the walls so you can use self-tapping screws to connect into something solid.

We also installed an 8" wide shelf along one side, about 12" from the roof. This gives us a place for tubing, banners, etc.

We added a small plastic storage box on the front to put a steel cable (for locking the trailer to utility poles when parked remotely), a small jack, lug wrench, etc., and mounted a spare tire to the frame. This keeps everything together, and also keeps it out of the trailer.

Make sure everything in the trailer is secured before pulling it. I have a “personal rule” that i wont pull a trailer that i didn’t load myself or check before i drive away. 500 pounds sliding across a trailer at the wrong time can rip the trailer off of the hitch and cause a serious accident.

Lastly, we used a company called TKO graphics to do the lettering. We provided digital files of what we wanted and placement and they created the decals and then applied them. We chose decals over paint.

Good luck!

19

Maybe we could form a blown transmission group. Mine blew on the way to Lone Star a few years back. It was an adventure getting into Houston.
Yee Haw!

20

our team doesn’t have a trailer(yet :slight_smile: ) but my youth group has a nice 5X8 that pulls nice with everything i have used(have not try the minivan just 15 and 12 passenger vans i don’t know what brand it is… i can look when i am there later to day… we put a lot in that thing going on trip on our trip this last spring we had over 2000 LBS in it and it pulled great! and we got about 14 MPG with the 12 passenger van(which is doing great!) oh and it is a single axle and as someone on here said for just taking bots places thats all you need! as far as a team trailer i would say(like lots of people have said) one that you can get 2 or more robots in and tools and all that fun stuff.

hope this helps a bit