Buying a brand new trailer. Looking at Mac, Fontaine, Manac, and few others. What do you guys like?

On my trailers, the oldest of which is '93 , the only cracks have been sue to unmitigated corrosion jacking.

At the rear, suspension box attachments corrosion creates a Crack along the foot of the main beam.

Up front , the water intrusion above the kingpin will inevitably cause corrosion of the cross member feet if the kingpin plate is steel.
The one trailer with a factory aluminum kingpin plate has not shown cross member foot corrosion and the problems that follow. Not incidentally, it's the '93. I have since replaced a plate and kingpin on other trailers and corrected the corrosion damage.

 

See post below about frame cracks

 

Yes I completely agree with you on corrosion jacking being a major enemy to aluminum trailers. It is important maintenance on aging aluminum trailers. The kind of pressure is able to stretch the bolts or break them. Once you get a little play it's all over. The older 90s early 2000 reitnouers are bad for this. If someone let's it go to long it's not uncommon to be able to fill two five gallon buckets up with the corrosion.

The Ravens that my experience is based on started having cracks around the cross members on the main beam especially in the neck area from the flexing as the beams started getting fatigued from hauling steel. If you didn't keep up on repairs I've seen a few fail in front of the dolly legs.

 

Love my Mac, I have a Great Dane combo, a Mac and a Fontain Revolution 52. Mac is by far my favorite and the lightest. If buying new I’m looking no further than Mac.
The Fontain is a pita for oversized loads because the it is honeycomb and smooth underneath it can be problematic on where to hook chains too. Especially with wide steel plate. We haul a lot that is curved on each end and sets flat on the deck made for building tanks. No choice but to use straps on the center section unless your one of those that wraps their chains around or through your strap winches. We don’t do that. Like I said , pita.

I did see that Jordan had bought some trailers from East that looked pretty sharp but I haven’t looked hard at them or done any research. I thought the Fontain was awesome until I got one. So if I went with something other than the Mac I would do tons of research.

 

What do you mean honeycomb and smooth underneath

 

On the Fontain Revolution all of the support and cross members are sandwiched between aluminum on top and bottom. And they are smooth underneath. Most other trailers have crossmembers running side to side. These are visible and the bottom side is open. If I had the Fontain here I would take a pic for you. I am sure someone can post one for you. With them being smooth underneath it limits where you can hook chains and straps to the rub rail and the little slots they have cut under the rub rail. Or using the anchors or chains in the top of the deck. None of These are conducive to wide loads that must sit flat on the deck. We put winches on both sides and cut the hooks off some straps and that works for straps. We haul a lot of steel plate that gets one or two cross ties under each end and the middle 30 foot of steel plate lies flat on the deck. On other trailers you can just throw chains and be done with it.

 

I remember East. We did not use those in particular. But to my eye they seems to be really good trailers. Meaning more costly possibly.

 

These are pictures of a brand new Mac trailer. Used to be a Mac fan now I'm not so sure. 14" crossmembers with extra stubs for coil hauler. Trailer was ordered and spec'd to haul steel. One forktruck rear unload with skids under 10000lbs did that to the floor.

 

Well that's not good?!?!?!

 

I know, it's a bad deal all round. To fix it right if they can? Means the floor has to be cut all to rat__it. You can imagine the runaround thats going on now. That trailer's worth well over 100g and then have to cut it up?! Made me sick just looking at it and its not even mine!