Monday, January 10, 2011

Monday, January 10, 2011 - Found The Trailer!

Day was still chilly and foggy with occasional drizzle, but we confirmed a job in Nashville for next week, and went out in search of a trailer. We started at Texan Trailers here in Tomball, but the only enclosed trailer they had was a HUGE Kiefer Built. Though it was only a two-horse straight load, it was obviously designed for draft horses. I was afraid our horses would get lost in there! A super big tack room, and lots of bells and whistles, but quite a bit over our price range, and just too big for what we needed. Next, we headed 20 miles north to a private seller in Magnolia. Jamie greeted us on her driveway and led us back to her 03 Logan 2 horse slant load. This was a much more manageable size. Though it was extra tall, it was moderately wide, had a big tack room that included a padded bench storage box, 2 hat racks on springs, a shelf, and best of all, a 35-gallon water tank tucked in the corner, an added bonus we hadn't seen before but that will come in tremendously handy. It has Dexter torsion axles (like on our RV), self-adjusting brakes, pretty good tires, and can be completely closed up if necessary. A couple of drop-down windows add to the features as well. It's smaller than the huge thing we looked at earlier in the day, but considerably larger than what we have now. In other words, just about perfect for what we need. It's white, and has a fantastic graphic of a running horse on the side, in a color that will match my truck and the graphics on the RV perfectly,making a perfect set. The final straw was the fact that it's a 2003, which is the same as the van (which we bought new) and the truck we bought in September in Phoenix. 2003 must have been a great year! We negotiated a price only slightly above my price range : - ), and shook hands on the deal. Jamie needs to clean it out, and to keep it to take her mare to Texas A&M for some vet treatment for a few days, then return her next Monday, which will work out just fine for us, as we have to fly to Nashville Sunday, returning Monday. Then we can pick up the trailer next Tuesday and get everything moved over. Meanwhile, David (our hostess' son) is pretty sure he can find a buyer for our old trailer fairly quickly. I'm sure if I put an ad on craigslist I can probably sell it before the week is out in any event. Jamie only just listed hers on Friday, and several of the ads I answered said they'd been sold already, so trailers are apparently in great demand right now. Very happy we solved our problem at last! Stopped at Wal-mart on the way home for some groceries, arrived back to discover our mail STILL hadn't caught up to us (it missed us at Corpus, taking 7 days to arrive even though it was priority mail), and then they forwarded it priority last Thursday. I'm having a hard time understanding why it would take more than four days to travel 100 miles, but there you go. Spent the evening watching a pointless alien slasher movie with Dennis Quaid, trying to keep warm, but happy we're missing the foot of snow they're having at home!