Trailer mover plans on ebay - how well do they work?

[Boband4]

I have a 32' foot trailer, a CC truck (21' long), and a 90º driveway at the end of a dead end street. I can back the trailer around the 90º corner into the driveway to turn around, but it takes a bunch of maneuvering. I see the Park it 360's, and the Power Caster ads, but I cant afford to drop $1,500 on one of them. I also see the ads on ebay for electric trailer dolly plans that use a winch motor. Does anyone have one of these? If so, how big of a trailer are you moving with it - length, axles and weight? Do you have use of the trailer's brakes? Overall impression, how well does it work? Would you do it again?

Clicky

[hddecker]

I have seen these in use at RV dealers, they use them for the really tight areas where they can't get the fork lift in. They don't move very fast and have massive battery packs.

What you see on ebay looks to have about half they battery power that the ones I've seen and they have a motor that is bigger than a 3000# ATV winch. I'm a little sceptical on the claimed weight capacity and the prices for the materials seem on the low side.

For my money the front mounted hitch is a better solution and you have it with you where ever you go. There are times when I wished I would have had the front mounted receiver to get into a tight campsite.

[Gdetrailer]

Jaxom wrote:
You should consider putting a receiver hitch on the front of your tow vehicle. Your steer axle will be close to the coupler pivot point and the rig will be EXTREMELY maneuverable. Of course you wont be able to use your mirrors so you will need an able assistant.

Etrailer.com has a lot of front mounted receivers. $125-$175 or so.

THIS IS THE BEST IDEA..

You have a very LONG and HEAVY trailer, a one hundred pound "mover" is NO MATCH for a very heavy and long trailer.

Take a good hard look at some of the manuals for those movers and you will find notices about not using them on ANY SLOPES. They must be used on pretty much flat land..

If you do decide to build your own mover I would highly recommend you add a BRAKE CONTROLLER to the mover. Basically any cheap time based one can work by speeding up the ramp up time or using a relay to trip the manual button when you stop the mover motor.

Personally this is no place for a DIY project especially if you NEED to purchase plans off the internet.

A front mounted hitch receiver on your tow vehicle will allow you to make very quick sharp turns AND be in full control of your trailer..

[neschultz]

My son and I built the heavy duty one. Nice gadget, fun to build and play with and probably works fine for a lot of circumstances. For my case (26' ~5000# shadow cruiser), it just wasn't safe. When backing you had to hold down on the handle hard (this was on asphalt) or the mover would try to drive out from under the TT and flip out of the ball. I did use the TT battery to power it, which turned out to be a mistake for me also. Going into my shed is a 6' long ramp with a 6" rise. The tires spun and wouldn't pull it up the incline. I was able to get it in by using my truck to help pull from the other door for just a few feet. Before taking it out I also hooked a switch to turn on the trailer brakes so I'd be able to go down that slope slowly. First time I tried that, the mover jerked out of my hands real fast, uncoupled itself from the ball, unplugged the 12 volt connector to the TT and rolled away. Luckily, my wife threw a 4 x 4 under the wheels and stopped it with no one hurt or any damage. The mover was immediately disposed of and I bought a compact JD 2320 to move the TT, cut grass, push snow etc. That worked fine...now have MH.

[gunner65]

No idea if it works or not but that looks really interesting. I would replace the battery with an AC to DC inverter and use an AC extension chord. That would eliminate an extra battery to take care of.

[Jaxom]

You should consider putting a receiver hitch on the front of your tow vehicle. Your steer axle will be close to the coupler pivot point and the rig will be EXTREMELY maneuverable. Of course you wont be able to use your mirrors so you will need an able assistant.

Etrailer.com has a lot of front mounted receivers. $125-$175 or so.