I recently finished up my build of the Harbor Freight folding trailer and I wanted to go over some of the things that I’ve added to it in case it helps some of you who are interested in this trailer, considering that it seems to be pretty popular.
First off, I want to preface that for this build, I was going for lightweight and minimal. I bought this trailer because it can fold and be stored away. I didn’t want to have a trailer sitting outside 24/7 ruining my house’s curb appeal. That means, that I would need to make everything be able to easily be put together and broken down for storage. As few things bolted in place as possible and some sort of quick connect is the way to go. I also needed this thing to be lightweight because I’m pulling it behind an average-size crossover that has a 3500 lbs max payload. The lighter I can keep the trailer, the more weight I’d be able to haul.
After assembly, the first thing I added was the flooring. The trailer is 4’x8’ in size so standard size 4’x8’ sheet goods work perfectly. I went with 3/4” pressure-treated plywood. This was something that I was on the fence about. I went with 3/4'“ for the added strength and rigidity but I wasn’t sure I’d actually needed pressure treated considering I never plan to hual in the rain and this trailer is stored inside. Pressure treated was more than twice the price of not but at the end of the day, I went pressure treated as a just-in-case thing since there might still be water on the road that gets flung up or something. With all the other wood, I went non-pressure treated.
Next up are the walls. For these, I went with standard construction lumber 2”x4” and 19x32” plywood. This size plywood was the cheapest, thinest, and lightest that they had at the store. Again, lightweight is important for me because I plan to take these walls on and off all the time. I originally planned to use 2”x10” but as I was loading them onto my cart for checkout at the store, I was telling myself that man this is already a pain in the ass here, I’m going to hate my life having to move these around all the time especially when it’s all screwed together and get even heavier. But that all depends on how high you plan to make your walls.
For my trailer, from the bottom of the brackets to the floor, it’s about 4”, and each plywood slat is 16”, with about 2” in between. That means that this 2”x4” is 38” long, but what’s actually functional above the flooring is 34”. I made all the walls with (3) 2”x4”x10’ and (2) sheets of 4’x8’ plywood.
Something that I want to note is that with the brackets, although they look like they were made for 2”x4”s and I’m sure they are, they’re actually just slightly too small on the sides. So you’ll have to trim the sides of the 2”x4” to get it to fit in the brackets. I used a jigsaw and found that if I removed the round-over edge on one side, that was pretty much the perfect amount to make things fit properly.
To hold all the 2”x4”s in place, I use these 3/8”x4” hitch pins. These allow me to lock the walls in place but still quickly and easily remove them for storage.
Once you get all the walls up, you’ll notice that they still kind of flop around and move pretty easily. To fix this, I used some trailer corner brackets. This is a pretty simple product that essentially just act like tongue and groove. One side slips into the other and locks them together. Very simple but absolutely does the job.
Lastly, my tied-down points. For this, I went with something called E-Track. This is a pretty widely available system that’s made by a bunch of manufacturers and comes in different lengths that offer a lot of tiedown and adjustment points. I personally went with single-slot tracks because I knew that I only needed a few points to tie down from and didn’t want an entire track sitting in my trailer for no reason. I just don’t need a million different possible tie-down locations. The nice thing about the E-Track system is that it offers you a quick release tiedown system. With the track, you use a connector that has a little trigger on one end. When the trigger is pulled, it allows the attachment to slip into the track and holds it in place when released. I have a ring that can be used with traditional tie-downs but there are other accessory options. There are even straps with these attachments built in which saves you on extra step. This is an extremely convenient option that still offers you thousands of pounds of tiedown force.
Lastly, I painted all the wood black in some exterior paint. For this, I just went with the cheapest option available because again, my trailer is sitting inside most of its life. The paint is really just for aesthetics.
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Trailer Hitch Lock https://amzn.to/4ee6wN5
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Straps to Hold Trailer Folded https://amzn.to/4cZEOTp
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