How to Check the Strength of a Trailer

"Hi, I'm Albert Hedgepeth with Expert Village. Today we're going to talk a little bit about trailer maintenance. Right now let's talk a little bit about frames, struts, welds and pretty much how the entire trailer is structured and built. Something that's really important in maintenance to take a look at quit frequently is to make sure that none of the struts running along the trailer frame itself are bent or warped or if they've been jack-knifed, its a good idea to go ahead and have them rebent or replaced. Checking the welds along each seem where struts and reinforcements are welded to make sure that they aren't cracking and starting to split will help make sure that the trailer maintains stability. Another part of the frame that you want to make sure you pay some attention to are these fender welds. As you can see, this one's really starting to fall apart. That comes from putting the boat into the water in the salt water and not coming back and cleaning it. Although these do tend to break down much quicker than the struts and the rest of the frame. These fenders do a lot of things. They're steps to get up onto the load that you're carrying. They're also there to make sure that debris and things that are flying up from the road from the tires are not actually hitting the load and damaging what you're carrying. If someone steps up on this and as you can see, they probably have, their foot will go right through it and this stuff is sharp so you really need to go ahead and replace them at this point. If you go ahead and check the exterior of the frame of the entire trailer, you replace components that are rusting out like these fenders and you check all your welds, you'll keep a pretty strong trailer and your load will ride pretty well."