Make Stick Type Small Boat Trailer

Article By Shorty
A "Stick Trailer" is a slang term for basically a long stick of tube steel, with a set of wheels on the back end. Super light weight, simple, but does a good job. This same concept can be seen scaled to semi-tractor size, and on the highways carrying long loads like utility poles and other long loads.

This is the frame and axle left over from my project of joining the HF boat trailer with a HF utility trailer.

I bought a piece of 2" x 3" box tube steel and bolted it onto the frame as a new tongue.

I had a couple of leftover piece of large angle iron that work great as bunk supports. also notice the heavy angle at the front end of the frame, that is welded onto the tongue, and bolts into the frame for extra support.

But since bolted on, I can seperate the tongue from the frame later if I have to move, and pack this away with my other household stuff.

I had a koi rescue come up, so this trailers first trip out of the house was carrying a barrel of water so I could retrieve some fish. I had previously made a box to sit on the frame, between the fenders. It was a simple matter to shorten the length of the box so it would fit in the new configuration of this trailer.

I've got a lot more stuff to add to this trailer, but for now this is what it looks like.



I had a number of concrete flat work projects in my yard to work on, so I pickup concrete from Home Depot like this. I have carried 12 bags in one load, but I backed it down to 10 bags as shown in the picture, becuase when I get home, that is the most weight I want to push through my yard to get to the back where I was doing the work. At 80 lbs per bag, that is 800 lbs, and the trailer is only rated for 600. A friend of mine pointed out that the springs and axle are the same as their 1100 lb rated trailer, so I didn't worry that I was overloading it's rating a bit.

I hauled about 35 loads on the trailer as configured like this and it went fine. The only problems I ran into is that sometimes other idiot drivers wouldn't notice the concrete and once a guy almost hit my trailer. Probably should have painted the trailer white instead of black.

One thing that bugged me is the tongue would wiggle a bit when I hit bumps. Sort of a flexing back and forth. I later fixed this -- see my laser sailboat pages.

I park the trailer in my back yard along a fence, so the boat sitting on top of it plus the fence shades one of the tires. The other tire is exposed to the sun most of the day, so I made this UV cover.

Simple as can be, it is just a piece of plywood with a couple of hooks screwed onto it. The little block of wood on the ground is my wheel chocks, so the trailer doesn't start rolling on it's own.

Here are some other variations of bolt together trailers:
PWC boat trailer
40" x 48" utility trailer
4ft. x 8ft. Steel Folding Utility Trailer
Galvanized Boat Trailer