17 Tool Trailer Improvement Ideas

1) Speed Up With a Backup Camera

Backup cameras are game changers if you have a large tool trailer. Get two.

Why?

One is for speed. One is for safety.

The first one goes on the back of your truck and to help you line up your ball and coupler. Even if you do this all the time, you'll still have a miss occasionally, which means you get out, check the coupler to ball distance, and then walk back to your truck and back up another few inches.

The second one goes on the back of your tool trailer so you can see what (and who!) is behind you when backing up. With a tool trailer, you'll sometimes find your self physically getting out and checking what's behind you or asking a helper to check.

If you check yourself, you might not know if someone or something has moved behind your trailer between the time you checked and the time it took you to walk back and jump in the seat of your truck!

When you buy backup cameras, you are buying peace of mind - you know that you can back up without any worry. You know where you're backing up and that nothing is there. You can go a little faster.

Backup cameras don't replace trailer driving skills, but they will improve your safety and speed.

2) Real-Time Video and Trailer Location

What if you could see what was happening in your trailer and always know where it was?

Robert, of My Fortress Construction, rigged up a solar panel, 12 volt battery, two wifi cameras, and a cell phone to do just that.

The interior cameras connect to the smart phone, set up as a mobile hotspot, so he can view live feeds of the inside of his tool trailer. The phone also sends geolcation information, so that he knows if the trailer moves.

The setup is powered by a solar panel that charges the 12 volt battery through a charge controller.

This is a pretty DIY solution, but there are other antitheft devices and services that will give you these features with no hassle and higher cost.

3) Smooth Walking With a Ramp Toe

A ramp toe is a short extension to your trailer's ramp door that makes the transition from ramp to the ground smoother.

A normal ramp door has a tall lip that increases the difficulty of wheeling heavy tools on the ramp. You can screw on a piano hinge and a section of plywood to make a ramp extension that folds out and eliminates the tall lip.

If you frequently wheel saws or materials out of your trailer, this is a quick and easy frustration-saver.

4) Fill the Gap for Easy Rolling

If you have a ramp door, you have a gap between the ramp and the trailer's floor when the ramp is down. If you wheel tools and materials down your ramp, wheels gets stuck in this gap.

Fill it with a piece of plywood to make the gap disappear. Give yourself a little leeway in the size of the gap filler so that it will still fit if the ramp is angled up or down a bit more than normal.

You can mount the gap filler with piano hinge, like this handyman did, or you can leave it loose and only slap it in when you need it.

A Lesser Step

Trailers with barn doors have a bit of a step up to get into them. You might need a barn door setup if you work in an area with confined street parking, but you can make things easier on yourself by building a step box.

Pull it out at the job, and put it away at the end of the day.

6) Push and Pull on a Rack Roller

If you don't have one, a roller on the back of your trailer's roof rack will make it a lot easier to load ladders and lengths of materials.

Most larger tool trailers have roof heights of 8-9 feet from the ground and this can make it very difficult to load anything from the rear. If you load with a step ladder, this is even more dicey, since pushing an extension ladder onto the rack will make you feel unstable on a step ladder!

A roller reduces the amount of force you need to slide your gear and makes loading and unloading safer.

7) Rack Ladders and Catwalks for Easy Access

It can be helpful to have a dedicated ladder for climbing onto the roof of your trailer. This will make it safer and easier to push and pull long items on the rack.

However, the roof of a trailer is thin and light. They aren't usually designed to be walked on, and, on most trailers, you'll dent the roof if you try to walk on it.

Instead, run a dedicated catwalk down the center of the roof rack for easy access.

You can recess the catwalk in the rack crossbars to keep the rack surface level.

8) Outside Light for Packing Up

Sometimes, you work in the dark or pack up in the dark. Or maybe you deal with trailer stuff back at the shop and lighting isn't always good.

This is where a good outside light can come in handy. You can set this up a number of ways.

The simplest solution is to use a battery-powered light that can clamp or attach somewhere on or in your trailer to shine outward. Magnetic work lights won't work for this since your trailer's body is most likely aluminum.

Another way to do this is to wire in one or more lights into 12V or 120V wiring in your trailer. This requires you to have some sort of wiring to support lights, so requires a little more thought.

If your truck and trailer have the right wiring harness, you can additionally wire lights into your truck's reverse lights. Your lights would need to be switched to isolate the circuits, but then you could have brighter reverse lights and independently-powered outside lights.

9) Brighten Up With Inside Lights

On cloudy days and late nights, your trailer will be dark. Being able to see into your drawers and storage cubbies will make you faster. You have three options:

First, the easy way to add lights is battery-powered puck lights. These are cheap, go anywhere and are fast to install. They are not incredibly bright and you'll need to change batteries.

Second, you can wire in 120V LED or fluorescent (or similar) lights to light up when you're connected to the grid. Be choosy in your light choice. Some lights, like xenon, can get pretty warm and add to uncomfortable heat on hot days.

Third, you can add 12V LED strip lights. Some tradespeople add a small 12V battery to their trailer to power these lights so that they have interior lighting anytime.

You may want to consider using two of the above options in tandem so that you always have the brightest light available whenever you're working.

10) Resist Rot With Undercoating

Many enclosed trailers come with no undercoat on the floor or frame. In wetter climates, this can cause rot in the plywood floor and rust in steel frame members.

A spray-on undercoating goes a long way to protect your trailer from rotting away, especially on wet and salty roads.

Make sure you inspect the undercoat job after you get your trailer to ensure that your trailer has complete coverage.

11) Stay Cool (or Warm) With Insulation

If you work in a hot climate, the sun can really bake the inside of your trailer. While you can't eliminate it, you can use a layer of insulation to keep out some heat. A layer of insulation in your roof will keep you a little cooler. You can likewise insulate your tool trailer to keep you warmer in the winter.

Some trailer manufacturers will install insulation from the factory, and some will also install a heat pump that can provide both heat and air conditioning.

12) Reduce Moisture and Heat With Vents

Some contractors find that their tools have a bit of condensation on them after a night of being closed up in the trailer. This is because warm wet air contacts cold tools and water vapor turns into water droplets. This is bad for tools.

Ventilation in your trailer can help with this or solve the problem completely. Some contractors simply use a crank-lift vent that opens a small vent in your roof. If you want a bit more ventilation, you can also install a vent plus fan combo that will get air circulating.

If you use a cover with the vent, it can be kept open during rain.

13) Stay Safe With Anti-Skid on Ramps

Ramp doors are made with plywood and when plywood gets wet it gets slippery.

This is particularly dangerous if you need to enter and exit your tool trailer many times a day, and is worse when you are tired.

To make it non-slip, you can mix sand with paint or polyurethane and paint on a coating. Alternatively, you can buy anti-skid tape or pads that you can quickly stick onto your ramp.

14) Protect Your Floor

If you'll be moving a lot of equipment or heavy materials, or your trade uses oily machinery, or you frequently bring wet equipment into your tool trailer, you may want to protect your floor to keep it from being damaged or becoming slippery.

You can:

• Paint your floor. Add sand so it's not slippery.
• Use a bedliner coating that resists oils and water.
• Install a thin piece of sacrificial plywood.

15) Use Better Locks

Locks are important to keep people out of your trailer, since you've got thousands of dollars of tools in it. Padlocks can be easily snipped with bolt cutters, so if you're working in an area, you should consider using a puck-style lock.

These locks can't be easily cut and cover the locking and latching parts of your trailer's door. They are used by contractors like Anthony of Mast Builders.

Find a dedicated place to store your puck lock on your trailer. They can be easy to lose.

16) RV Door Latches

Some tradespeople are concerned that they'll be locked inside their trailer, or they want the ability to shut their trailer when they're inside.

You can install an RV-style door latch on the side door to give you more control over your door. These latches are relatively inexpensive and aren't difficult to install. RV latches aren't as strong or theft-proof as puck locks, but they make locked access a little quicker.

You could also modify your existing latch. Mel, a handyman, modified his existing door latch so that he could lock it open while he was inside.

17)use a Bedliner on Your Floor.

Tool trailer floors come in plywood or OSB, and neither is known for rot resistance. Both can also be slippery when wet or muddy, and this is usually at the worst times: moving larger tools or materials.

Bedliners protect your trailer's floor from water and mud and can also provide extra traction when you need it.

One thing you should always consider when doing modifications is weight. Line-X sprayed to a 1/8" thickness weighs about 0.7 lbs. per square foot.

A typical tool trailer will have the full floor sprayed and the first 6" of the walls. For a 7' x 16' flat nose trailer, this results in about 104 lbs of extra weight. For a 8.5' x 20' flat nose trailer, this results in about 151 lbs of extra weight.