Time to upgrade the horse trailer

Back in the good old days of horse ownership, we had one horse, Finn. Finn is a mustang from the Palomino Butte herd here in Oregon. Finn has been Heather’s horse for a few years now and I think he really enjoyed being the “only child”. Before Finn, Heather owned a handful of other horses, but always only one at a time. Since we only ever owned one horse at a time, and we only ever boarded them, we really only had need for a small bumper pull trailer, and found a pretty good deal on a 2 horse trailer that was in pretty good shape. I did a bit of work to it, fixed some rusty spots, replaced the rotten wood floor boards, but the work seemed to never end on it.

Once we moved to the farm, things changed. When you finally have land after wanting it for years, you always look for ways to fill it up, to use it all. Of course for Heather that meant moving Finn here from where he was being boarded. Of course pretty quickly we realized Finn was lonely and needed a friend. What the heck, let’s get a wild burro. Oh wait, you can’t just get one, they’ll get lonely, they need a friend? So somehow we end up with 2 wild burros, Grizzly and Donkey Hotey (aka Don Quixote…more on them in a future post). Well, they’re cute and all, but they don’t do much, and you can’t really do much with them, and I’m definitely not planning to ride them. So we end up getting another wild mustang foal, Rip. For those keeping track, that’s 4 equines added to the property in less than a year of living here.

Well shoot, what’s one more horse, right? So recently we’ve added a 3rd wild mustang to the growing herd, Kylo. Yes, I think my wife has a “condition”. Granted, it is a noble condition, saving wild equines from the near desolate range where they would either starve to death or become food for other animals, or worse be held in holding pens for their entire lives. It is hard to argue with a cause so noble…but come on! So if you’re still trying to keep track, that’s now 5 equines. Our little 2 horse trailer would not cut it any longer.

We live in an area surrounded by trees. A couple years ago, right after moving onto our new property, we had a pretty bad scare when we were forced to evacuate due to us being in the path of a pretty nasty wild fire burning completely out of control, one that came very close to wiping out the town of Estacada. We ended up having to stay in a hotel for a week, and we were lucky enough at the time that we were boarding Finn so he was safe and taken care of by the boarding facility. If (when) that should happen again, we’d be in a world of hurt if we had to evacuate again with the herd we’d accumulated. We ended up buying a travel trailer, for the humans and dogs, and just this past week sold the 2 horse trailer and bought a 4 horse gooseneck trailer.

Through a friend we found a pretty sweet deal on a 2000 Logan Shadow and snatched it up after giving it a thorough look-over and realizing it didn’t look nearly as old as it’s 22 years. Not having a gooseneck hitch on my truck, and ordering one turning out to be a royal pain in the ass thanks to the current supply chain and unemployment situation our country is experiencing, the previous owner offered to deliver it to us for free, which was super nice of her.

It’s a very straight trailer, a bit of rust here and there, but easily fixed, nothing like the rust our last trailer had. Theres a bit of a section of banged up diamond plating, but I think I can fix that pretty easily. The “LQ” or Living Quarters is pretty spartan, just a flat spot for a mattress a boot box to hide your dirty boots, and some corner shelves.

The back horse area and saddle rack/tack area is in amazing shape and won’t need much work if any. There might need to be some work done on bearings and brakes, what trailer doesn’t need those maintained, but that’s all do it yourself type stuff anyway.

My plans for this trailer include the following:

• Replace all the exterior lights with LED running, tail/brake and flood lights
• Replace all the interior lights with LEDs
• Add a “house” auxiliary battery and locking battery box to store it in
• Add ability to charge the house battery while the truck is plugged in or while plugged into a 15amp extension cord and an external source
• Rewire so the interior lights and exterior flood lights aren’t dependent on the truck being connected to the 7-way plug
• Add solar panels to help keep the house battery charged up when “off-grid”
• Add some insulation, panelling and snap in vinyl flooring to the LQ area to help make it a bit more livable
• Add a propane bottle and small cook stove and maybe a small propane heater and propane water heater
• Add a small RV sink and water pump for washing hands or dishes
• A million other things I’m sure I haven’t thought of yet

The primary goal for this trailer is to be able to evacuate, somewhere, a fairground, a friend’s place with our animals and not have to worry about making multiple trips and deciding which animals to take first in case we can’t come back. Yes we have 5 equines and it’s a 4 horse trailer, but the burros are smaller and can fit together in the last, larger “stall” area. The secondary goal of the trailer is to be able to take Finn and Rip, and maybe Kylo horse camping or to training clinics for short weekend trips. The LQ in this trailer isn’t going to be comfortable enough to spend more than a weekend, maybe a longer 3 day weekend at most before it starts feeling cramped, but it will be nicer than sleeping on the ground in a tent.

I think we got pretty lucky with our find and I can’t wait to get started on building it out. I’ll be sure and document my progress here so you can follow along. I’m also using a Facebook Group called “Horse Trailer Conversion II” for inspiration and ideas. If you are the slightest bit interested in how people remodel and restore horse trailers, you should join that group. Let me know if you’ve ever done any larger horse trailer work, or if you have any tips or suggestions. And of course I’m always willing to answer any questions you might have, just post them below.

Enjoy some “before” pictures for now, but I’m ready to get this project started!