We needed several small sturdy trailers for a special project we were doing for a really good customer, anybody else we would have told to bugger off, it was a real pain to do.

After fiddling around repairing, reinforcing and rebuilding the typical generic 'garden cart' type trailers my maintenance man & I decided there had to be something better. Since we were strictly controlled in width, by existing trees which were close together and HAD to stay, we decided a conventional box trailer wouldn't do, even though it would have been perfect other than being too wide.

What we ended up with worked fantastic, and still does, the employees took them home for yard duty. We started with the largest wheelbarrow pan we could find, a 10 cu. ft. polyethylene job from a heavy duty contractor's wheelbarrow. We mounted this on an axle made out of heavy wall steel pipe with axle stubs with 4 bolt hubs welded into the ends. We then welded a tongue to this and used the 'tipper' mechanism off a snowmobile trailer to allow the pan to dump. We used ATV type turf tires which gave us the necessary bit of suspension to stop breakage on tough ground.

Total cost per unit was $75 for the wheelbarrow pan, $100 for two wheels, $75 for two stubs with hubs, $50 for misc. parts for a total of $300 bucks plus welding time, etc.

Could I have bought something for that much, sure, would it have worked as well or lasted as long, I doubt it.

Best of luck.

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