What is the best cargo trailer on the market?
That’s hard to answer because there are so many different brands and types of trailers on the market. Diamond, Haulmark, Lark, and Pace are good trailers but it's just people’s opinions. The reality is that most trailers are made with the same materials; their parts and materials are interchangeable.
Most dirt cheap trailers are made with a hybrid of Chinese steel and low-grade aluminum. The trailer market has gotten so competitive that almost of dealers will sell a stock trailer with a profit margin of $150; knowing that trailer will fail within 5 years but after the 3-year warranty. That leaves the customer with two options; buy new one or repair the old one.
This gives the dealer a 50% chance that the customer will return to buy a new one or painfully pay for the trailer to be service for half of the price of a new one. Win-Win for the dealer! Sucks for the customer.
Another example is that the dealer will sell a custom-built a trailer with all of the bells and whistles (Most of the time, crap that the customer does not need nor wants) and over-price it. Dealer knows that the customer will pay for it because it would be more expensive to custom-built themselves.
How does you would know this?
That is easy to explain; our parent company is made up of data scientists and analysts come from the big trailer freight industry. In over words; we use data mining and analytics to figure what trailers will last the longest, what operations are these trailers being used for and what our customers really need or want.EggieX Quality Control Audit: (EggieX is a data mining and machine learning company based in Savannah GA)
Data Example: In 2014, 54,000 Warranty Claims filed for corrosion and ABS issues. In 2015, 21,000 warranty claims filed for corrosion and ABS (Braking issues). In 2016, 39,000 warranty claims filed for corrosion and ABS issues.
Why the sudden spike is braking issues? After research and data mining; we discover a correlation between earth’s 2014 winter and anti-icing chemicals. 2014’s winter was slightly colder than 2015, and 2015 winter was much colder than 2016’s winter.
This meant that the state and local governments laid down more anti-icing chemicals on the roads in 2015; expecting a colder winter in 2016. But 2016 winter was warmer and wetter. As a result, the anti-icing chemicals did not dissolve through roadway friction but instead got diluted with the rainwater. This cause the chemicals to lay on the road longer and allowed those chemicals to spread under the trailers by tire spray. As the environment got dryer; those chemicals began to corrode the aluminum and was creating a large amount of rust on cargo trailers.
Why the large amounts of rust?
Aluminum corrodes but it does not rust unlike steel or iron. What we discovered was that trailer manufacturers were using a Chinese version of Alloy 2011 and 2024. Alloy 2011 and 2024 are cheap aluminum because they have poor welding quality. But the Chinese version alloys was mixed with different various types of metals. Also, the Chinese were also mislabeling their alloys 2011 and 2024 as 3003 or 5052 (high-grade aluminum)
End the result: this cost customers hundreds of dollars for repairs; or force customers to buy new trailers after their warranty had expired. The life expectancy was 8 year in 2006 but it’s about 4 years. It had decreased by 50% in ten ten years.
In short, this is why trailer dealers need to perform quality control audits on their trailers coming for the factories. They need to make sure that their customers are getting a safe and quality product that will last past the 4 year life expectancy. This is why, you need a trailer dealer that sells trailers with a 5-year warranty.
So, what is the best cargo trailer on the market? The trailer with the best warranty!