I have been given a 4 horse gooseneck slant load trailer with a tack room by my friend.

Her husband bought the trailer. He went through and re-did ALL of the electrical on it completely.  New tail lights, side lights, etc. Floor is new and any rust on it has been fixed and primed.  She even gave me the paint for it.  All I have to do is a final sanding, tape off the windows and paint for the most part. The trailer, for it's age, is pretty outstanding and I'm very excited to have it!!

Here's the fun part ...

The husband didn't bother tagging it because he knew it was going to sit around for about a year while he worked on it. He was to the point where he was going to paint it and he suddenly died - which is why she's getting rid of it (removing memories etc).  Very sad.  :(
However ... SHE had no idea who he got the trailer from and now cannot find the title for it - though she knows she had it.

I looked all over the trailer in all of the places a VIN number could/should be. I even had a friend from a trailer store look at it. No VIN.  The trailer is at least 10 years old and he said that some states didn't used to require you to have a VIN # on a trailer.  Trailer also didn't have safety chains - which he suggested would be an indicator is probably came from a state that didn't require these. He suggested Georgia as it's state of origin.

Anyway ... without the VIN #, he said I could take the trailer down to a weigh station, get a certified weight, and claim it as a home made trailer to get a licene plate for it.  Several others have confirmed this ... which is fine. I can do that if I need to.

One of the things that I'm going to have to do to get the license plate is to take it in for a safety inspection. In reading about the safety inspection, it said I had to have safety chains, which is fine.  We bolted onto the frame per the instructions in the box, but I wonder ...  Do I need to have a bead welded around the chains? Ideally I'd think I would LIKE to do this but just for the purpose of passing safety inspections, do I NEED to weld them? If I can hold off on that until later, that would be cool because I'd like to have several welding projects done at one time and I can't afford all of them right at this moment.

I plan to paint the trailer this summer but I read reflectors were required too.  I have not seen reflectors on other trailers of similar size so I'm curious about what they mean by reflector and placement. They dont illustrate placement.  Is this simple round reflective plastic ones or the red/white reflective tape?

Overall length of the trailer is roughly 28 feet long
Weight is rough guesstimate (from trailer friend) 6000 or 7000 lbs.

Any thoughts, ideas, website links welcome.

Thanks in advance!!  :)

The running lights at the top four corners are there, sides and back.  There's even a couple of cool little tiny red LED lights ont he bottom side.

Guess I'll have to waste some cash and put the reflector stickers on, peel them off, paint, buy new ones and re-apply.  What a waste of money :(

http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/rules-regulations/administration/fmcsr/fmcsrruletext.aspx?reg=393.11

See Figure 14