Our team of 4 were going up to Minnesota for a canoe race. We planned to enter two different races and needed to bring two boats with us. Only one boat fits on top of the car. I have a utility trailer I use to haul boats, but there were concerns about its stability for a 1,000 mile round trip drive with two large boats on it. I agreed with this concern and took it to my local welder. This is not the second time the welder has worked on the trailer. The first time, I had them add five feet to the tongue. This helped with longer boats and makes it much easier to back up.
In the before photo above, you can see the silver uprights that hold boats. They used self taping screws to hold the uprights in place and bolts for the crossbars. While this has worked, I’ve always had some concern about them failing. If you grabbed any post and shook, it wobbled quite a bit. How did we fix it?
The welder put metal plates on the 4 uprights to connect the cross bar to the upright. This gave significant left to right stability on the bars. On the uprights, small flat iron was used to provide front to back stability. Now the trailer is rock solid. Most important to me is that its still functional as a utility trailer. I still regularly haul my riding and push mowers in this along with other items. I’m guessing that I now have about $1,000 invested into this multi-use trailer and am very satisfied with it. I’m looking forward to the next reason to take this for a long distance with boats on it!
Hogan Haake