Barn Doors or a Ramp Door for Your Tool Trailer?

Quick Verdicts: Three Important Things

There are a few things that are important for picking the door type on a tool trailer, but for efficiency and practicality, here are three most important:

1. Parking: Barn doors are better for parking in tight areas.
2. Entry/egress: Ramps make it easier to walk into your tool trailer.
3. Loading heavy/bulky items: Ramps make it easier to roll heavy things into your trailer.

We'll talk about some other pros and cons, but these should be your top considerations when your picking a trailer door style.

You can also maneuver a barn door trailer with the doors open to position the rear entry, which you might not be able to do with a ramp door.

Where Do You Park?

The amount of parking space you occupy is very important in certain places and the 6 feet or more that a trailer ramp takes up often isn't doable.

Barn doors, with their shorter swing, are better for tight parking spots, which means you'll want them in dense urban and suburban areas where you park on the street.

When you open a door, it needs a certain amount of space to swing. Ramp doors are longer, so they need much more space than a barn door. With typical trailer proportions, a barn door needs about half the space of a ramp door.

Let's do a quick example with a 7'x14' enclosed trailer:

• A typical 7'x14' trailer has a 78" door height and a 77" door width.
• A typical 7'x14' trailer is 18 feet long.
• A typical parallel parking space in the US is 16-20 feet long.

The swing distance for a ramp door on this trailer will be around 78", meaning you need 78" behind your trailer to open it. 78" is 6 1/2'.

Closed, this trailer will basically fit in a parking place, but not if the ramp is deployed, since the ramp adds about 6 1/2 feet to the length of the trailer (this number is a little less because of the angles, but it won't matter in practice).

In contrast, a barn door setup on a 7' wide trailer will have a swing distance of around 3' 3", which is half of the rear entry's width.

If you need to parallel park or even pull-through park frequently, and then open a door, barn doors will be easier to use.

Trailer Doors Flush Against the Body?

Because of fender interference, the barn doors on most 7' and narrower dual axle trailers won't fold flat to the body. This has to do with the axle placement. On a dual axle trailer, the axles need to be far enough back for the correct weight distribution and this will put them close to the rear doors.

An 8 foot wide trailer, however, has flat sides with no fender protrusion. So barn doors on an 8-foot trailer will fold flat against the trailer body.

Easy Entry and Egress

You'll be getting into and out of your trailer a lot, so if it's hard, you'll start to dislike it.

Ramps Have Easier Walk-In Access

You can walk up a ramp or step up into a tool trailer. Since this is a physical motion you may be repeating several times a day, you should think about how much you and your employees like steps. This seems to be a personal preference, but it's probably easier for most people to walk up a ramp.

Ramp doors are great for working in open areas where you can walk straight into and out of the trailer.

If you or employees don't need to get in the trailer frequently, this matters less.

But Those Annoying Cables...

Ramp doors are easy to lift and lower, but that's because they have springs and cables.

Some tradepeople really dislike the cables. If you park on the street, for instance, you may need to walk around the cables to get on the ramp, and so they can lengthen the distance you need to go to get in the trailer.

Barn Doors Have Better Quick Access

If you just need to grab a tool or get in real quick, opening a single barn door will be easier than dropping a ramp door.

Wheel Heavy Loads on a Ramp Door

Ramps are convenient if you need to load or unload heavy tools or materials from your tools trailer.

If you're a contractor, you may use a table saw and miter saw on the job side that need to be moved outside the trailer. You can get a stand with wheels for either saw, and a ramp makes it a lot easier to get one in or out.

If you're a plumber with a tool trailer, carting water heaters or drain cleaning machines is much easier when you have a ramp than not.

And certain trades require a ramp: landscapers need a ramp for lawnmowers!

Ramps Are Backsavers

If you think you might need a ramp, consider that ramps aren't for the days you feel good, they're for the difficult days that beat you up. You might be fine with lifting your heavy tools most of the time, but consider that you'll have days that are terrible and exhausting, and that on those days you risk your physical health the most.

Ramps can save your body on those tougher days.

Add a Ramp to Barn Doors

If you need barn doors, but still want a ramp, build one! A 3' wide by 6' long ramp that stores in a slot could give you the best of both worlds.

Even a simple trailer ramp is cheap to build and and will make working a little easier.

Less Rain and Dirt With Barn Doors

Ramp doors without an anti-skid coating are slippery when wet, since they're just plywood. When open, they allow lots of rain and snow to enter.

A single barn door can be opened to give you partial access to your trailer, and it lets in much less rain.

Ramps get dirty, and you can flip dirt and mud into your trailer. Barn doors are probably a bit cleaner. Either way, it's good to blow your tool trailer out with a blower.

Vertical Storage

This shouldn't sway your decision, but if you go with barn doors, you can use them for convenient vertical storage. This is a good place to hang long items, like extension cords or clothing, or items that you frequently use, like a lightweight two-step step ladder.

Keep your hinges tight by mounting lighter weight items - this is not the place for your table saw to hang! Also check that what you hang doesn't hit your shelving on the inside.

I don't know what a barn door or a ramp door are....

Enclosed cargo trailers come with three different rear door configurations:

• Ramp door
• Barn door
• Single barn door

What's a Ramp Door?

A ramp door is hinged at the trailer's floor and swings from top to bottom.

What's a Barn Door?

Barn doors are doors at the back of the trailer that have a vertical split between them. One door swings out to the left, and one door swings out to the right.

What's a Single Barn Door?

This is really just a normal side-hinged door, like the door on your house. These doors are usually seen on smaller trailers. A full-width single hinge door would not be as useful as normal barn doors on a trailer because the width negates the benefits of the half-width barn doors.