Anyone have experience w/ Harbor Freight bolt together trailers?

I need an inexpensive trailer for a few hauls of around 900 miles each.  It isn’t cheap enough to rent one form uhaul or the like because I’ll need it for several days.  But after this I won’t really have a regular use for it.  I was thinking about maybe putting together one of the heavy duty harbor freight trailers.  Does anyone have any experience with these?  I figure I can weld it together if i decide to keep but since I have access to trailers for local use I probably will just get rid of it.  From what I’ve heard you can pick one of these up for about $250 if you get a coupon and then a little bit more for a deck.  That’s a heck of a lot cheaper than a rental or $1000 trailer.  What say you?

will the cheap bearings and such make a 900 mile trip let alone a few of them? if it has small rims under 14″ they need lots of grease for long trips…….

I think you can rent from Uhaul for about $25 a day…..

comp56 wrote:

will the cheap bearings and such make a 900 mile trip let alone a few of them? if it has small rims under 14″ they need lots of grease for long trips…….

I’ve read that if you re-pack the bearings with some good grease they work just fine for long hauls… then again I read that on the interwebs so who knows.

jbw55 wrote:

I think you can rent from Uhaul for about $25 a day…..

Yeah I’ll be using it for about 14 days so it’s about $100 over the cost of the harbor freight trailer or maybe $50 once you put on the deck and re-pack the bearings.  Just trying to save a little.

I would pay the rental price if it were me. A lot easier and you would have a much better trailer. And you wouldn’t have a trailer to deal with after the fact. HF would scare me.

Listen to the people. The small difference and who ya gonna call if if craps on you?

I wouldn’t have any concerns buying it for local use, but even after repacking the bearings I’d be leery over that distance. It may handle it just fine, but it certainly isn’t designed for that type of service.

I don’t necessarily disagree with what’s been said, but my experience could at least add to the info you have in making a decision.

I have the tiny 4’x4′, with a deck and ramp built onto it. I pull it daily with about 450 pounds on it. It has 8′ wheels so I put on bearing buddies to make it easy to monitor the grease level. I drive up to about an hour at a time at highway speeds. I’ve had zero issues with it other than electric. Every time I look at the grease it’s in good shape. My tie down points put a pretty good amount of stress on the thin-ish metal and it doesn’t seem to be shearing.

I read hundreds of reviews on all the sizes, many people weld them up but I didn’t and it’s stayed straight. I did put loc-tite on every bolt. Also the 3/4″ plywood deck has a lot to do with it’s rigidity.

For the price, mine’s a solid little trailer. For what you’re wanting to do though, just consider the price of your time. It’ll be a several hour project to build it. It’ll shock you how a whole trailer fits into the boxes they give you.

Well, Harbor Freight gets the job done, but be mindful of what you bought, 900 miles is quite a distance although I would inspect the trailer periodically through the trip(Wheels, bearings, grease, bolts) just to be on the safe side.

If in case you made the trip already I hope it was with no issues and if so great job!. 

I see camping trailers built from the HF trailers. I’m considering building one myself. I can’t honestly speak from experience though, never towed HF trailer.

But I do think if they were that dangerous we would of heard about it by now. Craigslist would be my first choice when buying. Used name brand is often better then new Chinese