I know that every person has a favorite brand, what opinions are out there about Miley Trailers? The 3 horse bumper pull more specifically. I am looking to buy relatively new 2005-2007. I have not physically seen a Miley near me but understand they are pretty popular in other areas of the country.  Is there a reason why they are so affordable? Any insight anyone has is greatly appreciated.

My wife and I recently purchased our first new trailer.

While looking for a budget trailer (our budget was $7000 for a 3H BP) we found 3 that were galvaneal and a bunch of steel trailers.  Only a few brands were available locally so we checked them all out.

First the galvaneal:

Morgan Built (not Miley as I previously thought)- most expensive of the galvaneal, but still a good price.  Had the nicest fit and finish of all the galvaneal trailers, but lacked drop down windows and some other things.  Had a low weight and heavy duty axles (5200lb IIRC) but they may have been an added option.  Latches and other things caused a lot of paint chipping and thus rust.  More rust than I would have liked to see on an '06 trailer, but not as bad as the Titan.

Titan- cheapest of the galvaneal, great price.  Fit and finish was marginal, and the drop down feed windows were somewhat of a joke- up way too high to be usable, and no running boards to help.  I am 6'3" and I could hardly reach to open them, much less actually feed or water.  No way my wife could have done anything with them.  Lots and lots of rust for a trailer that was manufactured only a few months previous.  Latches and other things felt cheap, and they had no rubber pads or anything to keep them from banging into the paint.  Hinges and other places had lots of rust, whole rubber mat had a nice orange coating to it.  Trailer weight empty was 4400 lbs, and the trailer only has 3500lb axles.  That leaves 3100 lbs total for 3 horses and tack.  YIKES!  Yet with all this weight, the trailer walls felt very very flimsy and thin.  Not a bad trailer if you added running boards and heavy duty axles.  However we wanted a trailer we wouldnt have to do anything to, after all we were purchasing a BRAND NEW trailer.

S&H- Only got to look at a 2H BP, but seriously considered ordering a custom built one.  More like the Miley than the Titan, not as much rust but still some (considering the claims of galvaneal, yet none of the steel trailers we looked at had as much rust as any of the galvaneal!).  Fit and finish wasn't that great, welds were fine but a bit sloppy (I am picky, having been a welder).  A fine trailer, and for the price I would choose the S&H over the Miley, but in other parts of the country I have seen the Miley cheaper- either one would be fine.  Miley also only comes stock with the 3500 lb axles and 6'6" height.  Did not get to see a 3H and verify the weight but was told by a sales person the weight of the 3H BP is 3600lbs.  Now 7' will ad a bit of weight, but still OK.  Would need to get heavy duty axles...

Corn Pro- very inexpensive, more than a thousand dollars cheaper than any others (close to $2K).  However it lacked any bit of style.  I already had an ugly stock trailer, so Corn Pro was not really an option for very long.  ;-)  Fit and finish were pretty solid though, trailer felt like it was built like a tank.  Too bad it looked like a tank too.  Didn't even look at trailer weights or axles on this one, as it fell out of the running right away.

Moritz- very nice stock combo 3H BP trailer.  However the price was just as high as the Titan and S&H with drop down windows.  Fit and finish were nice, no rust other than on the latches a little bit.  Granted the trailers they had in stock were built the same month we were looking at them!  Style and functionality seemed fine, weight was pretty low, came std. with 3500 lb axles, but weight was around 3300 I believe.  Not bad, would have been happy with it as it seemed very solid and strong. 

Featherlite- well this is the one we bought, so that should tell you something right there!  Style was first class, was very very solid build.  Corrugated steel sides really felt beefy, yet empty weight was one of the lowest.  The price on the STL trailers was pretty high (almostas much as the Miley) yet we found an '05 on the lot that was still new.  Even a year old sitting on the lot it had less rust than any of the galvaneal except maybe the Miley- the Titan was parked right next to it and was a year newer.  The difference in the amount of rust made us rule out the Titan (then the weight issue came up).  The price on the '05 was lower than any of the '06 models except the Corn Pro.  Even at the list price it would have been a close contest...  With the low price of the '05 it was a no brainer.  My big old draft horse will even fit in the last stall.  Not sure I'm comfortable with 1800lbs out back that far so she will be getting the middle and no horse in back. 

Hope this helps.  Figured I would share my thoughts on the trailers I looked at.  We also looked at some used Sundowner and Hawk trailers, but didn't really want a used trailer (and in our price range they were all 5+ years old).  Please also take into account my thoughts on trailers are biased by the fact that I need to trailer an 1800lb draft horse who leans very hard into things.  She moved a pole barn wall out 8" just getting at an itch...  My comment on the Titan and others about thin walls are not to say they are not safe.  Just not safe for my horse!

Cheers!

~Kevin

Roy23-

Corn Pro's here in the midwest are cheap.  I have seen used 3H slants go for $3500 (for a couple year old used one, not a clunker from a past decade!) and the new ones are around $5K+ depending on options after you account for shipping charges.  Still not too bad, not anywhere near the $7K you quoted.  ALL of the trailers I mentioned were under $7500 asking price.  I believe even the Miley was near this price, and it does look like a sharp trailer from the pics.

If you are interested in Corn Pro check out AlbertReardon here on the trailers for sale listings.  Shipping to your part of the country is probably expensive as most of the trailers are made either in the midwest or down south...

They should be able to get a trailer delivered to you for $4-5 hundred give or take- still a lot cheaper than $7K!

Cheers!

~Kevin

Hi There,

As you can tell by my username I am new to owning a truck and trailer. Two weeks ago I (very impulsively and with no research whatsoever) drove to a Ford truck/trailer dealership and decided to take the plunge. I bought a 2007 Miley 3 horse slant load bumper pull trailer and a Ford 150 V8 4.6 supercrew (interestingly, no trailer package was included, the dealership just added the hitch on once they realized that they had almost sold me a truck that had no hitch!). Hindsight is indeed 20/20. Considering the utter stupidity of purchasing those large ticket items with no research and not taking anyone along who actually knew about trucks and trailers ( I am involved in 4h so I had plenty of people to ask) I think I made out okay. After posting a query on this website I feel confident that I can pull my two horses (quarter horse and arab) the six or seven miles down straight roads to our 4h meetings in my new miley. However, in a few years I will definitely upgrade to a larger truck. It's hard when you are buying everything at once as there are budgets to consider.

Sorry, I am digressing. Back to my opinion of the miley. It was $12,000 canadian with the comfort package (rubber walls, matts and spare tire). THere is a dressing room/tack room at the front of the trailer. I did have to have the dealer send a repair tech out to install interior ties as there were none. At first they tried to tell me that these were "optional", however, after looking at the miley website product monograph the ties were clearly stated as standard features. THe tech came out and installed them. My tack room keys didn't fit the door so the dealer first said they would send new ones. Then they said that the doors are notorious for being sticky so they are sending me the same keys back to re-try. If they still don't work they will replace the door on the tack room. I still have yet to use the trailer once as I wanted to ensure that I could actually tie the horses in and that the tack room door wouldn't spontaneously fall open while I was driving. I am also having an equalizer hitch installed this week.

All I can say so far is that the dealership has been decent in fixing these problems but I can't help but wonder if there are are some quality issues if little things like this are popping up already before I have even used this brand new trailer.

Of course, I plan to practise pulling this trailer empty a few times to get comfortable with it before I put my horses in it. I am a little intimidated by all the negative comments I have read about the difficulty of bumper pulls however, I also think that this will only be problematic if I don't practise enough and have the patience to learn. I have several seasoned horse trailer drivers who have offered to come out with me and I am sure that they will also be in a better position than I am to offer constructive comments on the quality of the miley trailer. I will let you know what these thoughts are once I get out there and start using it (which will be later this week).

I'll keep you posted.

J

Hi Tammy,

I went out and looked at the dividers in my miley trailer and as the last person who posted indicated the dividers are indeed aluminum and there are no sharp edges anywhere to be found. The drop down windows work fine and there are bars on them also. I like that feature better than the circle j trailer that a friend of mine has which has no bars. The horses stick there heads out as soon as they are loaded in and I can't help but wonder if that is dangerous. If they spook and try to rear they could do some serious head/neck damage. Anyways, that is my two cents.

Jo

newbie truck/trailer owner