Hello,

I am looking for a new or used all aluminum trailer (Elite, Platinum, 4 Star)with an 8-10' sw, 7'6" tall, 8'wide 3H trailer with _feedbags_.  All I am finding, however, is this sort of trailer with mangers.  Is this type of trailer not available with feedbags -- should I just give up now?

Not sure about used - or how much you want to spend, but CM will custom build what ever you want - I had my trailer speical built with custom dividers and such and they were willing to build anything I wanted.

I'm pretty sure other companies will do this too but CM will for sure.

This must be a local to you thing ... There are lots of 3 horse slant trailers (all sizes of shortwall) new and used, without mangers around here.    You might have to travel out of area to get one.

What part of the country are you in?

There is an Eight foot wide x eight foot tall LQ on this site ...  Doesn't say how long the short wall is, but in the photo looks like about 8-ten ..

It's in your state too.

http://www.horsetrailerworld.com/home/trailerdetail.asp?ID=50700

My CM took 6 weeks from order to delivery.

They are built to order anyway so custom is not that big of a deal

Come to think of it, I can't recall seeing an eight foot wide trailer w/o mangers but I guess they are out there but would be very difficult to find.  Most that go w/ the 8 wide do so for the manger storage space even though I can see where the large hunters and certain breeds would like an 8 wide w/o mangers.

We have odered 2 Platinums, expect about 2-3.5 weeks after they began production and then another 1-3 weeks at the lq conversion company depending on how it is slated.  The fun part (sarcasm) in ordering is finding out when your dealer has a trailer slated to begin production and then you need around three weeks beforehand to make changes to the previously submitted unsold order.  In other words it could take you awhile to get the trailer in that you want but in the end I'm glad I waited.

The larger horses wouldn't get more room w/o the mangers as the head is above anyway. So you really wouldn't be gaining any useable space for the horse.... but (speaking from experiance here) some horse seem to like to climb into mangers and on to chest bars, I know I certainly would not buy a trailer with mangers for that reason (my mare is a bit of a monkey!). Also if you wanted to take out the dividers to haul say mares and foals or loose youngsters the mangers could be a problem.

You're right the heads are above but w/o the mangers they can drop down more.  It's fairly easy to see the difference just looking at a 3-4 horse w/o a manger in the first stall.  I'm not saying it's needed or even overly advantagous but i've heard it many times when talking about 7.5 wide trailers w/ mangers and the exact reason I wouldn't buy a 7.5 w/ mangers but would an 8.

Sure the horses heads are above the mangers but there is still less room.  I personally haven't had a problem w/ horses wanting to climb into mangers but have certainly have had a couple pawing feed bags in the first stall and have had one stand in the bag on trailers w/o mangers. We now have two that need to be hauled over the mangers or w/o feedbags.  Very vaild points, but w/ horses the one thing that's for certain is that nothing is for certain.