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Found this trailer Is it too big?

gcreekrch said:
I rolled my 20' gooseneck flatdeck with stockrack once! :oops:

In 2002 we bought 45 pairs and 18 breds from a couple who's family ranch had sold. We got their personal cows as they did not want the new manager to have them. I hired a liner to haul the pairs and I made 2 loads with our trailer.

The second load, I left home at 5 AM for the 3 hour drive to pick up the last 9 cows. Rounding a corner on Hwy 20 just west of Tatla Lake a sick, tick ridden cow moose thought she would cross the road in front of me. I locked up the brakes on the 550 and trailer and went fron 60 to 20 in short order. The moose decided she didn't want to cross about then and did a pirouette on the centerline and fell down. I swerved a little in order to miss her but ran over her head with the rear duals, spinning her in a half circle. The trailer swung out on the driver's side and both axles went right over her belly.

I didn't realize until just then that the hitch was nearly worn out, the trailer unhooked from the ball, rolled 3 times over the bank on the right hand side of the road and came to rest on it's wheels about 40 ft. below the road.

Moose was dead. I dragged her up the road a ways until I came to an old corner that had been cut off and left her there. Made my skin crawl to see the ticks she was carrying.

I then made my way a little farther to a fellow that owned a gravel truck. Fortunately he was up at 6:30 and had enough cables and chains to reach the trailer. We got it drug up to the road, hooked up again and was on my way with no other damage than a broken bead on one tire and a few of the metal stakes resembling piano keys.

The man who owns the store/service station at Tatla was kind enough to remount my tire at 7:30 AM, make me a cup of coffee and told me I'd had a bad enough day when I tried to pay him for his help.

All in all I was only 2 hours late to pick up the cows, just another day in the Chilcotin. :D

I did eventually replace the hitch but was sure glad the truck didn't go with the trailer that day. :wink:
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Great story!

And lots of mine contain one of your phrases "I didn't realize until just then that............" In mine, the dots have been filled in with horses, log truck, Cat, assorted unfriendly vietnamese, various women, booze, assorted suddenly unfriendly fellow bar patrons, misc machinery, assorted suddenly unfriendly relatives, road conditions, cops, bottemless snowbanks and mudholes, bank accts that weren't, trees that were kinda leanin and hung up, IRS's attitude---this is actually a quite useful phrase!
 
hayguy said:
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:


after pulling various trailer's around with various truck's for 30 some odd years, Ive come to the conclusion that it's way better to have too much truck than too much trailer :!:
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I have a 1 ton service truck and had a 310 JD backhoe on the trailer - - - topped a hill ( about 45 MPH flat on the floor ) on St Rd 38 and paving crew was right in front of me, cars coming at me so I could not go left, Road Grader in the ditch so I could not go right. Tires screaming, horn blasting and the paver got out of my way. I called 911 and the state police read the county crew the riot act for not having signs posted. Normally I get by just fine with the service truck and the backhoe but on that day I sure wished I had been in one of the dump trucks as they have more stopping power - - - but then I might have been going faster with the dump truck as well!

Enough can't be said about great brakes!
 
In the early 1980's, Peach and I lived south of the Niobrara River. The highway on either side coming up out of the river is quite steep, and seemed even "steeper" before the new bridge and modification of the highway took place a few years ago. We were in town pulling a sixteen-foot bumper pull trailer with one 1200 pound horse on the front. As I needed salt, we loaded a ton of salt on the back half of the trailer. Going down the river hill with our unbalanced load, the whole shebang started going much too fast and wobbling badly, all at the same time. We shimmied across the bridge, and by then a "roller skating" pumping action was severly taking place. (Maybe this was caused by the horse's gyrating motion.) It seemed like we were gaining speed until we got halfway up the other side. Somehow with a hard grip and lots of sweat, and Peach's powerful prayers, the outfit stayed on the road. I've tried real hard not to load a trailer unbalanced ever since.
 
I think we all have Bumper pull stories. :lol: :lol:

I was pulling one with a short box dodge. The trailer was loaded full with big steers and I started down a steep hill. The steers all pushed forward and got me a whippin' Of course there was a bridge at the bottom. The truck coming the other way pulled off as he couldn't figure out what the lights whipping back and forth across the road were. Kept my foot in it and got it going up the other side. I went down the next hill pretty slow.
 
We have what I consider the best of both worlds...a 16' gooseneck. Easier to pull than a bumper, shorter turning radius, big enough to haul a few cows, and small enough to get out of most train wrecks (we have a few).
The way our place is set up, if you need to haul more than half a dozen cows, you should probably just load a horse in the trailer and do it that way...
The bumper pulls are harder to control, stop, etc.
 
Back in the late 70's I headed to town with 7 cows in a 16' bumper trailer behind a Chevy 1/2 ton 4X4. Got about 10 miles down the highway and the trailer started to fishtail. I was using the trailer brakes and everything else I could to get it straitened out. Ended up turning the whole thing around on the road and going in the ditch backwards. Got pulled out by a propane truck that came along a few minutes later and went on to town very carefully. Never told Dad about my little tour of the ditch. After that I was really glad when that trailer got traded for a 20' gooseneck and haven't wanted to pull a bumper trailer since.
 
When I was a bit younger, in college, I was heading down a flat and straight gravel road in an Astro mini-van with a two-horse bumper pull on behind, running emtpy of livestock. Yes, it was a proud outfit for a young stockman, let me tell you. Anyway, the 50-something veterinarian that owned the mini-van and had borrowed the trailer was riding shotgun, enjoying the chance to leave the driving to someone else for once. As we approached a spot where the gravel road intersected an oil road there was a stop sign. My mentor, who had traveled this road countless times on his veterinary rounds, said "If nobody is coming I usually just run on through this stop sign." Well, there was sure nobody coming out there on that flat Colorado plain and I just held 'er steady at 55 mph or so. It was too late when I realized that I hadn't calculated the incline that had been engineered where the gravel road intersected the paved road. Nonetheless, the mini-van and two-horse rig immediately became airborn as we reached the crest of the incline. We cleared the pavement, or so it seemed, and landed with a thud. It was right about then that the trailer came off the ball and proceeded to pass us at a 45 degree angle off into the green wheat field. I said an awful word and pulled the van to a stop, hands molded to the steering wheel, a dust cloud overtaking us and settling all around. After gathering our wits about us we found an old lariat in the tack compartement of the trailer, hooked it on and pulled the trailer upright. We were back in business with nothing more than a few dents in the lid of that borrowed trailer. The 20-mile trip back home went by without a word between the two of us. I could never tell if my veterinarian friend was mad at me for not slowing down or mad at himself for telling me to run that stop sign in the first place! :cowboy:
 
These stories are fabulous! :lol: Hope you end up finding the right trailer that fits your budget, meets your needs and never causes you to have a story like these to tell! :lol: :lol: :lol:

BMR, what else is Haytrucker gonna say? "She was as homely as a two tone pig"? :lol:

Hopefully none of our insurance agents frequent this site or we might experience a rate raise! :D
 
I have to tell this one on my dad.. He and the hired man went to a branding one morning and took his horse and a two horse trailer. He pulled this trailer with a jeep cheerkee.. Anyways they got the calves all branded and ate dinner. After dinner they stayed to play poker and had maybe a drink or two. :drink: On the road out of this ranch was an autogate.. Anyways dad and the hired man got ready to go home..Loaded the horse.. Both were quite visity and they talked all the way home.. Pullled into the yard to unload the horse and low and behold the trailer was gone!!! Mom stepped out of the house and told dad that the neighbor had called and he had lost his horse trailer and horse at the first autogate to come back and get his horse and trailer cuz it was blocking the road and no one else at the branding could go home till he got his trailer out of the autogate.... Horse was fine and no damage to the trailer... We ribbed the dickins outta both of them for years.....It's still a remember when story that everyone tells to this day...
 
I have a pile of bumper hitch stories I could tell. The only thing that is certain is that you can hook one up to anything that has a bumper with a ball, you have to have a ball in your bed for a gooseneck. That being said a bumper hitch scares the hell out of me unless it is tongue heavy and well constructed, even then they make me a little nervous. I have had both come unhooked a gooseneck will generally catch on a tailgate or in a recessed ball compartment of a flatbed. Never had one with safety chains come unhooked, not sure I would want to, I love my horses but value my life. I would venture to guess that anyone one here who pulls a trailer much has forgot to hook her up at one time or another, bumper hitches generally don't stay that way in my experience while a gooseneck will.
 
You will not find a Livestock type trailer, 2 horse or larger that your Nissan is really equipped to pull, they can haul a small boat or a light utility trailer but they are just not made to haul anything heavy. The brakes, under carriage, and transmission are just to light, you can use it but the big problem is when things go south and you are undersized it can get hairy in a hurry.
I used to use a Silverado K1500 (with airbag stabilizers) to pull a 1600 gooseneck featherlight, and just around the local area it is still fine but on the open road the 2500 with the Allison trans and the heavy duty brakes is the only way I fill safe anymore. No matter how careful you are you can not control what happens around you, and believe me at some point some where something is going to happen. Keep the little truck for running around and get you a heavier duty vehicle for the trailer.
Good luck
 
You will not find a Livestock type trailer, 2 horse or larger that your Nissan is really equipped to pull, they can haul a small boat or a light utility trailer but they are just not made to haul anything heavy. The brakes, under carriage, and transmission are just to light, you can use it but the big problem is when things go south and you are undersized it can get hairy in a hurry.
I used to use a Silverado K1500 (with airbag stabilizers) to pull a 1600 gooseneck featherlight, and just around the local area it is still fine but on the open road the 2500 with the Allison trans and the heavy duty brakes is the only way I fill safe anymore. No matter how careful you are you can not control what happens around you, and believe me at some point some where something is going to happen. Keep the little truck for running around and get you a heavier duty vehicle for the trailer.
Good luck
 
Now I have a gooseneck story to tell, not a bad wreck that didn't happen, but some historical perspective.
Sometime in the early '90s we had sold yearlings, I remember because we were pulling my neighbors 7x20 trailer. That happened in a large town in the Nebraska panhandle, back then. After a little shopping we stopped in a smaller town, to use the facilities, or create an excuse, or both. We had only invested thirty minutes of our profit, before some friends of our showed up in need of therapy. They had been to their mother's ranch northwest of Torrington to ride their yearlings, and about two miles east of said small town the clutch in the ranch truck gave out.
By ranch truck I'm talking 1981 S1800 IH, 18' box with a stock rack, formerly occupied by two saddled horses, and their owners. They got a tow to a nearby feedlot, and a push back to the chute to unload and unsaddle. They stashed their tack some where, but after a little discussion it was arranged that we would pick those horses up and take them to a pasture on their home ranch. The last thing I remember about our directions was to "Open the gate , don't try that cattle guard".
A few hours later we loaded those horses by flashlight, and luck, just run 'em in loose in the trailer. At the appointed corner we turned off the highway and made our way up the ranch lane. This country is pretty sandy, and most of the "roads" don"t fit a 7' trailer. I'd had to stop to "check" something when we got a bit off the pavement , and as a preventative measure I locked the hubs in, thankfully. In a couple of miles we came to the noted cattle guard, and being a real student of math at the time, I said "I'm gonna pull the pickup on and check the trailer for width".
Anybody that has ranched in sand knows that cattle guard crossings in a line fence aren't a good place to be tenative. When 'ol Blue bogged down, I has just enough time to pull her in to 4-bighter, and hope(alas, in vain). One set of trailer wheels were perched on the spring shackles on aforementioned cattle guard. The tires were in contact with the world, but not functional.
I stepped out to survey our situation, and evaluate. And check something. And I realized that the escape door was already in the correct pasture, so I opened that door and turned two very trail-weary horses out further from the windmill than I had planned. Upon getting back in I was reminded " you should have caught one if we need pulled out"; to which I replied " we don't have any saddles, and just a darn short rope".
A quick down shift to low-range, and some sand getting thrown a ways, and we were loose, going back. As soon as things were straight, I opened the gate, drove through, turned around, and proceeded home uneventfulluy.
 

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