So, my dad and I have been working on building this trailer a while now. My dad and his friend were planning on making an Alaska trip in May 2019. Due to the shut down of the Canadian border, the trip got canceled, since that part of the trip was what they were looking forward to the most. That was one reason for the trailer build, the other reason for the build was because my family has been going out and doing the whole overlanding thing. My old truck (2014 Sierra), I built a rack to put a RTT on and we went to a few campgrounds with it. My 6 year old daughter loved it very much and so did my wife. Jackpot I got them hooked! Anyway, back to the trailer. We started looking at videos and pictures online and coming up with ideas. Although I feel like my dad and I could do all of this ourselves, we went and talked to a local welder about our ideas that didn't seem very interested in it at first. We finally sketched out some drawings to give him a better idea of what we wanted. We also told him to do some searching online for some better ideas. We continued to build our relationship with the welder and batting around many many ideas with him until we decided on a design for the frame.
So we went with a 3500 pound axle with an electric brake on it. The main square where the box will be mounted is 4' x 8'. From the tip of the tongue to the back is 13' long. We went with a max coupler stuck into the tube that runs from front of the trailer to the back. Both ends are wrapped so we can use the rear as a receiver hitch as well in case of recovery or any kind of rack if we wanted to. So for the next few weeks my dad and I went back and forth with ideas changing from minute to minute. We decided on this here:
It got late, there are many other supports to be added. The next pictures show the extra supports:
This is the point to where it is today. The bottom part will be enclosed. Pretty sure we have settled on aluminum sheeting for the floor and sides. We have a local shop that works on and repairs semi truck trailers, also where we bought the axles and springs from, that we visited with about some materials. They showed us around their warehouse where we came across the panels that they use to build the walls on semi truck trailers. It is sheet metal on both sides that sandwiches a composite material in the middle. It is very stout! We decided to use it for the top of the enclosed part since we will be building a rack on top of it below the tent rack. It will be for throwing firewood on or anything else so we figured the stronger the better. Up front there will be a door on each side and a slide out for my Dometic fridge. The back will have a swing out tailgate (similar to a jeep). We will also have a 30-40 gallon tank laying flat right over the axle plumbed to a water heater. I will continue to post pictures of this build here. I will also include a few more pictures here.
If you have any questions or just wanna bat around some ideas I would be glad to chat. If life wasn't so busy, we would be building ourselves. Really can't wait to get this thing in the dry with the tent on top to get it out in the woods to start making memories with my family in it. On a side note, the welder has totally gotten into this project and is planning on building his family one once we are done.
