It all started out innocently enough,a couple of years ago I was headed down to Eustis Florida to participate in the Destination Eustis Motorcycle Show & Swap Meet. Since I was going alone to this event, I borrowed a 5 X 8 enclosed trailer to pull a single bike for the show. My beloved wife didn’t accompany for this one & I didn’t feel like paying for a hotel room so I packed an air mattress & a sleeping bag so that I could sleep in the trailer. You could say that this was the inspiration for the Cheap Toy Hauler.

This particular trailer was a completely uninsulated cargo trailer and that weekend it was freezing cold down in Florida at night & I was freezing so about 2in the morning I got up and fired up my butane cook stove just to warm the place up a little bit. Once I did this sleep was possible. Overall the experience wasn’t terrible but it could have been better. I learned three very important things on this trip, one is that an uninsulated cargo trailer is miserable during anything but ideal weather; two was that a 5’ x 8’ enclosed trailer is a 1 bike trailer for full size motorcycles. The third lesson was that if you’re hauling motorcycles, atvs or other wheeled toys is that a ramp door is also essential. It was okay for one time but hauling ramps around all the time is just silly.

After discussing this with my wife who was wholeheartedly behind the idea of converting a cargo trailer to a camper, after looking at mini-campers, teardrop campers, & travel trailers, we visited a couple of local trailer dealers to see what they had in stock. This was a bit disheartening due to the high prices and lack of selection available. My local dealers stock was mostly 5’ X 8’trailers with no options, and the prices were equal to or greater than what I eventually bought my fully insulated 6’ X 10’ cargo trailer for. The other problem was that my local dealer was closed during the hours I had available for shopping so there was no way I could talk to them about special ordering a trailer to my specifications.

I came home& got on the web to research custom ordering a new cargo trailer built to my specifications. There are regional distributors and manufacturers all around the country so look them up and find one near you. For me the choice was plainoltrailers.com out of Georgia. Their current base price on a 6’ X 10’ v nose trailer is $1925 (November 2018) picked up at the factory in Georgia. The reason that I chose this size was due to the weight limitations of my tow vehicle. I called the phone number on the website to get the weight of a couple of different trailers & the 6’ x 10’ was just over 1100 pounds empty, leaving me a little over 2000 pounds for add-ons & cargo. So I got back online I speced the trailer out with all the options I wanted including full insulation, RV style side door, a window directly opposite the RV door & electric brakes on the 3500 pound axle. And it still came in less than the local name brand dealer wanted for a plain 5’ x 8’. The only catch was it was a 10 hour round trip from Darlington S.C. to Pearson Ga. to pick it up, but I saved enough money to make it worth every mile.

After getting it home I put my 2 biggest bikes in it, took a bunch of measurements,figured out what all equipment we wanted in it and of course how to do it all as cheaply as possible without compromising quality. In the next installment of this series of articles we’ll look at how I installed a little sink, electrical outlets etc. in the v nose of the cheap toy hauler.

If you really like this idea & want to follow along please sign up for email notifications in the upper left hand corner.

CLICK HERE TO READ PART TWO OF THIS BUILD.