Steel deck and be done with it. Not as heavy as you think. Lasts almost forever, well, unless you live in the rust belt. Here, pretty much forever. Treated my small car trailer with a steel deck when the wood was too rotten to haul a car safely, and that's been close to 30 years ago. Still going, no rust to be found aside from a little surface rust in the coupler. Pulls 100 times better with the steel deck!! My next one will have a steel deck too, and will be 18' instead of 16'.
Trailer Deck Stain
- Thread starter bambam31
- Start date
The “C”-purlins shape make them extremely stiff and when laid out to replace that board trailer-bed it’s surprising how it strengthened up the trailer and got rid of flex when hauling heavy/concentrated loads. You’re right, Lugbolt... it really improved the trailer for no weight penalty.
To illustrate the construction, I laid one purlin down and tack welded it’s long left surface to the edge of the trailer with a 2” bead every 3 feet... and the lower right edge to the cross-beams. The next purlin‘s upper left edge to the purlin just mentioned... and it’s lower rt edge to the crossbeam... and so on and so on...
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Magicman
Well-known member
Lifetime Member
Equipment
M4900 Utility Special 4WD e/w FEL & 1530 John Deere "Traveling Man"
I would say your trailer decking depends on your trailer use. Mine have always been for tractors and excavator and implements but also mulch and hay. Unless the metal is reasonable strong setting a blade on excavator down for transportation or a disk or plow shank for hauling, I rather have them on wood than metal for wearing edges if nothing else. If you are using the trailer to haul a load on tires would think either surface is good such as my lawnmower trailer with it's expanded metal bottom or the dump trailer with smooth metal bottom for dirt and debris dumping.
