Would you assemble your own trailer if you had a kit?

[AeroAggie]

Just thinking out loud here...

Many (most?) adventure/offroad oriented folks like yourselves have at least some inclination to tinkering and assembling things, right? But most of us don't necessarily have the skills, experience, tools, or time to fabricate something from scratch like many of the excellent trailer builds on here. And for many of us, purchasing an adventure-ready trailer is not within our toy budgets.

I'm an aerospace engineer, which basically means I live and breathe aircraft construction. I have not built my own plane yet, but I am intimately familiar with aircraft construction, including experimental homebuilt kits.

What if you could order a trailer kit in a box for a fraction of the cost of a new assembled unit? Let's say the hard parts like welded joints or complex machined parts are prefabbed, and all you do is bolt or rivet the subassemblies together. Tools would be a minimal cost, and skills required would be no more difficult than pop-riveting (aircraft grade structural rivets, of course) or for the more adventurous, bucking solid rivets.

Most trailers are steel for both low material cost and durability, but I do believe a properly designed aluminum structure will be far lighter and no less durable, not to mention perform better offroad by virtue of lighter weight.

Is that something you would be interested in, or do you wholeheartedly believe that rugged and durable means welded steel?

 

[noahfecks]

I would be interested to see what you come up with

 

[cmck]

I like the idea....... I was a mentor on a high school robotics team and we did great with aluminum and pop rivets. The build accuracy was higher and the weight went down, when we lost all those bolts.

Also, I regularly cut aluminum with good carbide tooling and wood working tools.

The key is a good design that hits the sweet spot. Keep the idea brewing and push more details out to the nether.

 

[LAMBCRUSHER]

The issue with this idea is that the assemblies required to make it " bolt right up" are intricate and make it difficult for the producer to make much money on. As well, bolred trailers won't do as well as a beefy welded box tube frame trailer off road. The idea of pre cut you weld might be more feasible

 

[AeroAggie]

The issue with this idea is that the assemblies required to make it " bolt right up" are intricate and make it difficult for the producer to make much money on. As well, bolred trailers won't do as well as a beefy welded box tube frame trailer off road. The idea of pre cut you weld might be more feasible

"Bolt right up" might be over-simplifying it a bit, and I agree it would be difficult for a one-man operation working out of a garage to make money on. But a well designed structure, cut and drilled on CNC and assembled to very tight tolerances could be relatively economical to produce and sell at a profit. As for strength, I do agree that welded steel is far stronger and more durable but my point is that aluminum can be constructed to be strong enough and durable enough at a lower weight and better overall performance that it has clear advantages. And when I say bolted or riveted, I don't mean it the same way that you would bolt together a new gas grill from the big box store, with wobbly legs and all. I mean honest, aircraft grade construction (because that's what I know best).

To be perfectly honest, I have zero experience with adventure trailering of any kind. I've done some casual offroading but most of my adventures have been backpacking or bicycling. I'm exploring this idea as a means to involve my whole family in getting outdoors, while at the same time maybe opening doors to a business that could get me out of flat-ass Kansas and into the mountains.

My dream would be to set up shop somewhere in Colorado and be able to provide either or kits in a box that you assemble yourself, or completed drive-away products up to and including adventure-ready rentals. Prototypes and initial production could be outsourced to virtually any shop with a water jet, sheet metal brake, and 3-axis CNC. There's no shortage of these shops where I live due to the aircraft industry around here.

Taking another page from the kit airplane concept - Let's say you're interested, but don't want to invest in more tools or don't have garage space. I'd like to provide a guided build option where you come to the facility, use my tools and jigs, and have the engineers looking over your shoulder and helping you along the way. This could be a week-long build offered a couple times per year on a limited reservation basis.

 

[AeroAggie]

My trailer kit concept is entirely based on one of the most successful kit airplane manufacturers - Van's Aircraft. Take his RV-7 as an example:

That picture is what he calls the "standard kit", not the quickbuild option which contains significant amount of prebuilt structure. It contains all the structural parts you need to build that airplane pictured next to it, and almost all the parts are pre-punched or pre-drilled with pilot holes. You can take it out of the box and start assembling with clecos, then drill full size holes and rivet parts together. This kit sells for $24k today and takes roughly 2000 hours to build.

Scaling back the complexity a bit from airplane to trailer, you can easily imagine that a kit could be produced for something like $2000-$3000 and be built in <100 hours.

 

[Josh N]

What you are proposing has essentially been done with varying degrees of success. One builder who is still going after a decade is this one:

Jeep Trailer Home | Dinoot Jeep Trailers

On the flip side a very promising builder barely got off the ground and totally flopped but is trying to salvage the idea again:

Teal Tail Feather Home

Your expertise undoubtedly will lead to a excellent product. If you make a good product at a good price there is room in the market for sure.

 

[AeroAggie]

What you are proposing has essentially been done with varying degrees of success. One builder who is still going after a decade is this one:

Jeep Trailer Home | Dinoot Jeep Trailers

On the flip side a very promising builder barely got off the ground and totally flopped but is trying to salvage the idea again:

Teal Tail Feather Home

Your expertise undoubtedly will lead to a excellent product. If you make a good product at a good price there is room in the market for sure.

Thanks for the info! I was hoping someone would enlighten me if such a critter as I imagine it already existed. While those do share the DIY nature of my idea, I can assure you mine would be quite different from either of those offerings. I can't say "better" yet as they have a product and I only have imagination at this time. But the thing in my head is definitely not what they're selling.

I like the Dinoot tubs, sorta. I've also been thinking about using composites in a trailer (again, along the lines of my aircraft experience). I think composites bring the ability to form complex shapes more easily than metals, but I think they lack the intrinsic durability of metal. And once damaged, composites are not as easily repaired as metals, especially out in the middle of nowhere when your tools are a hammer and a rock. That being said, I'd like to hear some long term owner feedback on the Dinoot products. They look pretty good.

The Tail Feather thing is a little too porta-potty for my taste but hey, good luck guys.

I don't have a business background, nor do I have any business stats about the Adventure industry, but it sure seems to me like there's a lot of room in the marketplace for good products that can survive the birthing process. Mine may never see the light of day but it's fun to noodle out some ideas...keeps the brain cells churning.

 

[Josh N]

Definitely not trying to crap on your ideas, just wanted to highlight two ends of the business spectrum for a kit trailer; one a success and another arguably a failure that I have seen over the past decade or so. I built my own trailer from scratch so have followed a good number of other builders both professionals and amateurs alike. As I have witnessed the dinoots have done well where others have come and gone. The tail feathers fit a unique niche but manufacturing issues got the better of them after they had be awarded a large one time contract. For ready built trailers lots of excellent designs came and went, usually because they priced themselves out of business. Looking forward to seeing your ideas. Hell, they may become the fuel for so many future amateur builders ideas if you never market yours.

 

[ntsqd]

I am leery of aluminum used to build a trailer in the common box tube frame methodology. I designed & built a bicycle trailer in '98 and part of the design process was to look at aluminum tubing for weight savings. What it significantly lightened was my wallet and not much else. Even adjusting tube sizes and wall thickness' to best use the metal it just didn't work out. I don't think that scaling it up will help that any.

My bike trailer was designed to carry 3 brown paper bags worth of groceries and occasionally another bike as shown. It has, however, carried one rather cute co-ed and a bunch of traffic cones while setting up a road bike Criterium race in downtown Chico, CA. This is the trailer as built in steel with the aluminum side panels riveted and bonded on using M-S 907, and yes that is a dual disc braked Single Speed in 1998:

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Done as a monocoque ala that Vans RV-7 (am currently following Vlad's RV-9A VFR trip to Russia) I think the metal has a lot of promise. I contemplated a monocoque design for the trailer above, but felt that I'd end up with a partial/hybrid at best and the whole idea took me well outside my comfort zone (sheet metal design & fab not being a strong point of mine).

Downside to a monocoque would be allowing for where owners decide they want to put stuff without it compromising the design. Expandability/modularity would also require some thought. How would you discourage an owner from attaching mass where it specifically shouldn't be attached and encourage it where suitable and appropriate?

 

[ntsqd]

fwiw, that trailer weighs 11 lbs. About 8 of that is the rear wheel.

 

[AeroAggie]

I'll follow up later when I'm back home with a laptop...posting with phone now.

I dig the bike trailer and would like to understand your design requirements a little better. A buddy of mine designed and built a larger two-wheeled cargo trailer which he towed behind a mountain bike from Colorado to Guatemala.

 

[ntsqd]

[HIJACK] Bike trailer constraints were simple. Poor college student, biked everywhere in town, only used the car to do the once a week shopping - which was never more than 3 paper bags worth - or to leave town on rare occasions. Build a bike trailer that used a long shackle Master lock for the yaw pivot, hide the pitch pivot retainer bolt and the clamp-on hitch bracket tension bolt behind the locked-on coupler so then need only to lock up the bike itself at the store. Using it cut down on fuel consumption significantly. Could only find one "Moto-Mag" wheel (rescued it from a recycling bin) so it's a one-wheel trailer. I wanted a hitch bracket that clamped-on & didn't require QR wheels like other single wheel bike trailers do. With one wheel I felt that the wheel had to trail directly behind the yaw pivot rather than directly behind the bike's CL. Figured that I wanted side panels anyway, so why not both rivet & bond them on, see if I can't pick-up a little extra strength for those unexpected cargoes like cute co-eds. Lefts are more tricky than rights, but its easy to get used to. [/HIJACK]

 

[AeroAggie]

I am leery of aluminum used to build a trailer in the common box tube frame methodology. I designed & built a bicycle trailer in '98 and part of the design process was to look at aluminum tubing for weight savings. What it significantly lightened was my wallet and not much else. Even adjusting tube sizes and wall thickness' to best use the metal it just didn't work out. I don't think that scaling it up will help that any.

Looking at your design as it sits, I completely agree that steel is a better choice for minimalist construction and college student budget. I dig it.

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Done as a monocoque ala that Vans RV-7 (am currently following Vlad's RV-9A VFR trip to Russia) I think the metal has a lot of promise. I contemplated a monocoque design for the trailer above, but felt that I'd end up with a partial/hybrid at best and the whole idea took me well outside my comfort zone (sheet metal design & fab not being a strong point of mine).

Downside to a monocoque would be allowing for where owners decide they want to put stuff without it compromising the design. Expandability/modularity would also require some thought. How would you discourage an owner from attaching mass where it specifically shouldn't be attached and encourage it where suitable and appropriate?

All good points, but that's a bit of thread creep and don't quite align with what I'm asking (not yet, anyway. we'll get there in another thread). I'm asking you to pretend for a moment that the imaginary design is structurally sound as determined by a structural engineer.

The whole point of this mental exercise is to determine the feasibility and appeal to the average Joe Mudder who wants a cool thing but doesn't have one or more of the necessary resources to either purchase the thing outright or build it from scratch.

 

[ntsqd]

So would I buy one? Probably not, but I would drool. Reason is we're covered there, so we're not in your target market. Which makes it difficult for me to have any idea if someone in your target market would buy one. My suspicion is that over the whole of that market your concept would appeal to a smaller segment of it. The segment that appreciates all things well done for the sake of doing it well. In other words those who would buy an AT or a any one of several OZ trailers if they could afford them, but can't. The rest won't understand when they can buy a Harbor Fright trailer kit and spend too much making it shoddily work w/o realizing what they've done.

Since Series LR bodies are aluminum and have a certain Espirit de Corps because of this I suspect that you'd find some market within that group. You need a marketing education or person.

EB's or FSB's?

 

[AeroAggie]

So would I buy one? Probably not, but I would drool. Reason is we're covered there, so we're not in your target market. Which makes it difficult for me to have any idea if someone in your target market would buy one. My suspicion is that over the whole of that market your concept would appeal to a smaller segment of it. The segment that appreciates all things well done for the sake of doing it well. In other words those who would buy an AT or a any one of several OZ trailers if they could afford them, but can't. The rest won't understand when they can buy a Harbor Fright trailer kit and spend too much making it shoddily work w/o realizing what they've done.

Since Series LR bodies are aluminum and have a certain Espirit de Corps because of this I suspect that you'd find some market within that group. You need a marketing education or person.

You're exactly right. My biggest problem is that my target market is ME. What do I want? I want a kick ass thing that isn't the same as everybody else's thing, and that I know how to design and build which mostly means using aircraft techniques. Bringing it to market is way outside my current knowledge base, so I'd have to either learn it or hire it. I suspect the latter.

EB's or FSB's?

Both, actually. I had a '96 daily driver and a '77 project. I spent 10 years and over $35k pimping out the '77 with a ton of body work, gorgeous paint, and a 5.8L EFI with a 4R70W auto. I got as far as installing the engine and tranny into the chassis (no wiring or plumbing yet) before having to sell it a few years ago. My marriage went to s*** so I sold everything I possibly could and moved as far away as I possibly could (from Texas to Maine). I'm happily remarried now and have 4 kids, so I need seating for 6. I now have a 2010 Land Cruiser that fits the whole family and is far more capable and far more comfortable than either of those Broncos. And frankly, it cost me less than what I had wrapped up in that '77. I still think about it from time to time, but I'm a born-again Land Cruiser guy now. These things are amazing.

 

[ntsqd]

I think that there are more than a few of "YOU"'s out there. The problem is finding them and tapping into that market. It isn't enough to have the exceptional product. You'll need a market penetration plan and the production ability to almost match demand. As a designer myself (production tools for high performance contactors i.e. product on every certain brand electric car out there) I'm one of "YOU", but I'm more likely to build it myself if I really want it badly enough to go out to the garage.
The $64 question is, are there enough of "YOU"'s to make it worth the trouble? That will boil down to cost per unit & complexity of the build. An RV-7 is a major cash and time commitment. I don't think that you can get either for a trailer.

My '70 EB:

Won't haul as many people as my old FJ60, but far better off pavement machine. Working on the on-pavement stuff - which is mostly insulation related.

 

[AeroAggie]

How many Broncos died to put that thing together?

 

[noahfecks]

I think you need to think about size and features and what is the best package that will appeal to the most people.

I want a 4'x6'x30" box with a fixed lid, rear swing gate and dual front side doors in front of the wheel

Someone else wants a 5'x4'6"x24" box with a hinged lid, swing down rear gate and tongue box

are there more of me or the next guy? if you offer my ideal will the next guy compromise? if you offer his ideal will i compromise?

it will be difficult to know if your materials have as much to do with your success as your design and how do you make an every man trailer without going full custom?

 

[AeroAggie]

I don't think it's possible to make an everyman trailer, nor would I try to do so. What I'm brainstorming here is merely a concept that would simply reduce some of the labor cost to the end user by allowing him or her to do the bulk of the assembly, but avoid the design phase and some of the more complex tasks like welding or machining.

There's no reason why the concept couldn't be applied to something as simple as an M101 clone or as complex as a $50k luxo expedition rig. It's not about the product, yet. It's the concept of CNC cut and drilled detail parts, and end-user assembly and finish. Did you build plastic models of cars as a kid? Same idea. You get a box of parts that fit together perfectly. Just assemble and paint. The hard part is done for you.

Obviously this would not appeal to the guy that has a full metal shop and can fabricate his ass off. That guy already built his trailer and he's out doing fun stuff. But for those guys that follow the build threads with comments like "man, I wish I had your skills!". Guess what? Here's a short cut...