Installing New Wooden Trailer Sides

I know I’ve been down this road before, but I thought I’d give you an update on the installation of my new wooden trailer sides. I’ve changed things up a bit.

With my first go-round of setting up some nice sides for my new trailer, I emphasized that weight was of the utmost importance. Well, after sleeping on it and looking out the window at the flimsy trailer sides I’d put together, I decided that luan wasn’t going to work out. While I was still conscious of weight, I also needed strength.

Back when I was looking at the trailer store’s inventory of trailers, I noticed that many trailers that were sent straight from the factory used standard 6 inch wide decking board. Many used the board all the way up to create sides that were at least two foot high. I didn’t need solid two foot sides, but I did like the idea of using the decking board.

So, I took another trip over to Home Depot (which I don’t enjoy, by the way) to pick up the materials I would need. I purchased four 12 foot long boards, and two 8 foot long ones. I also bought a few boxes of nuts, bolts, washers and some pieces of angle iron. I was happy with the plan I had.

The goal of these sides isn’t to waterproof my cargo. I’ll have tarps for that. It’s simply to create some sort of an emergency barrier in case something decides to shift. My peace of mind requires this at the very least.

After a few days of working in the knuckle banging cold, I cut, drilled and painted my way to some pretty sweet looking and acting trailer sides, which I’ll post below for you to see. I’m very happy with what I’ve done here because they still meet my requirements of being fairly lightweight and quite strong.

Just a note on the pictures I’m posting – I did this sort of post years ago with my last trailer side endeavor and had many comments asking questions about the intricacies of what I’ve done. So to preempt those types of comments, I decided to post more than mere far away photos and to focus on the details as well. Enjoy.