Tow Legal - Tow Safe

Horse trailers

As with boat trailers, there are specific recurring problems to be found with horse trailers.

Horse urine is extremely corrosive, so the floor of the trailer, together with the chassis members beneath are prone to corrosion. As a general rule, horse trailers spend most of their lives stood in a field with the occasional road journey, often towed behind comparatively heavy and powerful 4 x 4's. This results in corrosion growing up from below, excessive wear within the brake drum (due to rust forming and then being rubbed away) leading to ineffective brakes, which are often not noticed by the driver of a heavy 4 x 4 until it is too late.

Being dragged into and out of farm-yards fields etc. can cause damage to chassis components in general and brake linkages in particular. The photograph (above right) shows two offside wheels which are obviously "out of track"; it is often not possible from a cursory inspection to ascertain exactly what is wrong, but evidently "all is not right !" This defect could be caused by manoeuvring a heavy trailer, behind a powerful vehicle, on soft ground; or if one wheel dropped into a pot-hole, or as a result of heavy curbing.

It is important when inspecting a trailer in this manner that the vehicle combination has arrived at the inspection site in a straight line. If the approach is curved, there will be evident tyre distortion on the rim, which can be mistaken for bent stub-axles, misaligned suspension etc.

There are many old horse trailers still in service, some of them with interesting modifications! Pictured above is the coupling of a Rice Horse trailer, estimated to be 30 years old. This specimen has had a pair of dampers fitted in an attempt to imitate the improved performance of modern hydraulically damped couplings. I don't believe this particular modification to be either detrimental or beneficial. I do believe, however, that the time and money would have been better spent in ensuring that the brakes worked effectively, that the handbrake pawl spring was fitted the right way up, and in devising an effective brake-away cable attachment or fitting a secondary coupling (if the Gross Weight is less than 1,500 kg).

Break-away Cables and Secondary Couplings.

Over the course of the two week-ends, a number of trailers were detained at the Services, until work had been carried out on the brakes to make them effective.

Back to Tow Legal - Tow Safe Index Forward to Towbars